A windowing system is a component of a graphical user interface

Graphical user interface

In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...

 (GUI), and more specifically of a desktop environment

Desktop environment

In graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface derived from the desktop metaphor that is seen on most modern personal computers. These GUIs help the user in easily accessing, configuring, and modifying many important and frequently accessed...

, which supports the implementation of window manager

Window manager

A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment...

s, and provides basic support for graphics hardware, pointing devices such as mice, and keyboards. The mouse cursor is also generally drawn by the windowing system.

The term windowing system is sometimes used to refer to other elements of a graphical interface such as those belonging to window managers or even applications. While on some operating systems the distinction between applications, window managers, and their supporting technologies are blurred, strictly speaking, a windowing system does not include windows themselves.

From a programmer

Programmer

A programmer, computer programmer or coder is someone who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. One who practices or professes a formal approach to...

's point of view, a windowing system implements graphical primitives such as rendering fonts

Typeface

In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....

 or drawing a line on the screen, effectively providing an abstraction of the graphics hardware from higher level elements of the graphical interface like window managers.

A windowing system enables the computer user to work with several programs at the same time. Each program runs in its own window, which is generally a rectangular area of the screen. Most windowing systems have basic support of re-parenting which allows windows to overlap, however the ways in which windows interact is usually controlled by the window manager.

Some windowing systems, like the X Window System

X Window System

The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...

, have advanced capabilities such as network transparency

Network transparency

Network transparency in its most general sense refers to the ability of a protocol to transmit data over the network in a manner which is transparent to those using the applications that are using the protocol....

, allowing the user to display graphical applications running on a remote machine

Remote computer

A remote computer is a computer to which a user does not have physical access, but which he or she can access or manipulate via some kind of network....

. The X Window System takes a strictly layered approach, and does not implement any specific policy regarding the look and feel of the graphical user interfaces, and their behaviour, leaving that to the X window manager

X window manager

An X window manager is a window manager which runs on top of the X Window System, a windowing system mainly used on Unix-like systems.Unlike the Mac OS and Microsoft Windows platforms which have historically provided a vendor-controlled, fixed set of ways to control how windows and panes display...

s, widget toolkit

Widget toolkit

In computing, a widget toolkit, widget library, or GUI toolkit is a set of widgets for use in designing applications with graphical user interfaces...

s and desktop environment

Desktop environment

In graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface derived from the desktop metaphor that is seen on most modern personal computers. These GUIs help the user in easily accessing, configuring, and modifying many important and frequently accessed...

s.

For Unix-like

Unix-like

A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....

 operating systems

• 8½
  8½ (Plan 9)
  8½ is a window system developed for the Plan 9 from Bell Labs operating system by Rob Pike. According to its documentation, the system has little graphical fanciness, a fixed user interface, and depends on a three-button mouse...
  
   and rio for Plan 9
  Plan 9 from Bell Labs
  Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a distributed operating system. It was developed primarily for research purposes as the successor to Unix by the Computing Sciences Research Center at Bell Labs between the mid-1980s and 2002...
  
  
• Fresco/Berlin
• FramebufferUI (fbui) in-kernel windowing system
• HP Windows
• ManaGeR
  ManaGeR
  ManaGeR or MGR was an early windowing system originally designed and developed for Sun computers in 1984 by Stephen A. Uhler, then at Bellcore....
  
   (MGR)
• Metisse
  Metisse
  Metisse is a 2.5D windowing system, based on the X Window System. Metisse is available as a window manager for at least Mandriva One 2007, PCLinuxOS 2007 , Sabayon Linux, and Arch Linux. It has many features that set it apart from the traditional 3D "Cube workspace"...
  
  
• MicroXwin
  MicroXwin
  MicroXwin is a windowing system similar to the X Window System . By a different architecture, it provides a faster graphical user interface backend than the original X Window System, while still preserving the compatibility with standard X11 applications...
  
  
• NeWS
  NeWS
  NeWS was a windowing system developed by Sun Microsystems in the mid 1980s. Originally known as "SunDew", its primary authors were James Gosling and David S. H. Rosenthal...
  
   / OpenWindows
  OpenWindows
  OpenWindows was a desktop environment for Sun Microsystems workstations which handled SunView, NeWS, and X Window System protocols. OpenWindows was included in later releases of the operating systems SunOS 4 and Solaris, until its removal in Solaris 9 in favor of Common Desktop Environment and...
  
  
• NeXT DPS
  NEXTSTEP
  NeXTSTEP was the object-oriented, multitasking operating system developed by NeXT Computer to run on its range of proprietary workstation computers, such as the NeXTcube...
  
  
• Qt Extended
• Quartz Compositor
  Quartz Compositor
  Quartz Compositor is the windowing system in Mac OS X. It is responsible for presenting and maintaining rasterized, rendered graphics from the rest of the Core Graphics framework and other renderers in the Quartz technologies family...
  
   (Mac OS X
  Mac OS X
  Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
  
  )
• SunView
  SunView
  SunView was a windowing system from Sun Microsystems developed in the early 1980s. It was included as part of SunOS, Sun's UNIX implementation; unlike later UNIX windowing systems, much of it was implemented in the system kernel...
  
  
• Twin
  Twin (windowing system)
  Twin is a windowing environment with mouse support, window manager, terminal emulator and networked clients, all inside a text mode display.Twin supports a variety of displays:...
  
   (Text WINdows)
• W Window System
  W Window System
  The W window system is a windowing system and precursor in name and concept to the modern X window system.W was originally developed at Stanford University by Paul Asente and Brian Reid for the V operating system...
  
  
• Wayland
  Wayland (display server)
  Wayland is a display server protocol for the Unix-like operating systems and a library for Linux implementing that protocol.Wayland provides a method for compositing window managers to communicate directly with applications and to communicate directly with video and input hardware...
  
  
• X Window System
  X Window System
  The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
  
  
• Xynth
  Xynth
  Xynth is an embedded windowing system, released under LGPL, developed for systems with low resources, is an alternative for X Window System.The goal of the project is to release a soft but portable and powered Window Environment.The source language is C....
  
  
• XFast
  XFast
  XFast is a lightweight desktop environment that incorporates a display manager and a window manager within the same process. It is portable and works on many devices...
  
  
• Y Window System
  Y Window System
  The Y Window System is a windowing system, consisting of a window server and a client library for writing applications. It was written by Mark Thomas as the subject of his Master's thesis at Imperial College, London. It is intended to be a successor to the X Window System, hence the name...
  
  

Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

 windowing systems

• Dojo
  Dojo Toolkit
  Dojo Toolkit is an open source modular JavaScript library designed to ease the rapid development of cross-platform, JavaScript/Ajax-based applications and web sites. It was started by Alex Russell, Dylan Schiemann, David Schontzler, and others in 2004 and is dual-licensed under the modified BSD...
  
  
• ExtJS
  Ext (javascript library)
  Ext JS is a JavaScript library for building interactive web applications using techniques such as Ajax, DHTML and DOM scripting.Originally built as an add-on library extension of YUI by Jack Slocum, Ext includes interoperability with jQuery and Prototype...
  
  
• TIBCO
  Tibco Software
  TIBCO Software Inc. is a provider of infrastructure software for companies to use on-premise or as part of cloud computing environments. TIBCO manages information, decisions, processes and applications in real-time for over 4,000 customers worldwide...
  
   General Interface
• Web Window Manager
  Webwm
  WebWM is a web window manager API in PHP, which helps developers to create and manage dynamic windows inside their web applications.The whole window framework uses JavaScript making it light and versatile ....
  
  

Other

• DM
• GEM
  Graphical Environment Manager
  GEM was a windowing system created by Digital Research, Inc. for use with the CP/M operating system on the Intel 8088 and Motorola 68000 microprocessors...
  
  
• OPIE
• Intuition
  Intuition (Amiga)
  Intuition is the windowing system and user interface engine of AmigaOS. It was developed almost entirely by RJ Mical. Intuition should not be confused with Workbench, the AmigaOS spatial file manager, which relies on Intuition for handling windows and input events.Users may remember the initial...
  
  
• Microwindows
  Microwindows
  Microwindows is a windowing system which is full featured enough to be used on a PC or a PDA. The Nano-X Window System is an Open Source project aimed at bringing the features of modern graphical windowing environments to smaller devices and platforms...
  
  
• MiniGUI
  MiniGUI
  MiniGUI is a GUI system with support for real-time and embedded operating systems, and aims to be fast, stable, light-weight and cross-platform. It was first released under the GNU GPL in 1999, and has since offered a commercial version with more features, including support for operating systems...
  
  
• OOHG

Operating systems such as Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

, Mac OS (version 9

Mac OS 9

Mac OS 9 is the final major release of Apple's Mac OS before the launch of Mac OS X. Introduced on October 23, 1999, Apple positioned it as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever," highlighting Sherlock 2's Internet search capabilities, integration with Apple's free online services known as...

 and earlier), and Palm OS

Palm OS

Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...

, contain a windowing system which is integrated with the OS.

See also

• History of the graphical user interface
  History of the graphical user interface
  The graphical user interface, understood as the use of graphic icons and a pointing device to control a computer, has a four decade history of incremental refinements built on some constant core principles...
  
  
• Widget toolkit
  Widget toolkit
  In computing, a widget toolkit, widget library, or GUI toolkit is a set of widgets for use in designing applications with graphical user interfaces...
  
  
• Desktop environment
  Desktop environment
  In graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface derived from the desktop metaphor that is seen on most modern personal computers. These GUIs help the user in easily accessing, configuring, and modifying many important and frequently accessed...