When you run a program, either by double-clicking an icon, selecting a menu item, or using Start-Run, Windows takes a look at the program, determines what kind it is, and “does the right thing”. Windows supports both GUI and character-mode applications. To start the old character-mode version of Microsoft Word, you’d type “Word”, followed by the Enter key, and MS-DOS would run Word. Instead, you typed in certain commands, or the name of the program you wanted to run, pressed Return, and MS-DOS would locate the program and run it. Without graphics, character mode had no menus or icons to click on to run programs. MS-DOS, the pre-cursor to Windows, was built using a character-mode user interface. Character mode explicitly does not support pictures or graphics of any kind. The key is that in character mode, the only thing that can be displayed on the screen are characters. Your mail program, web browser, text editors, word processors, and more all display various graphical user interface components, including fancy icons, colorful images and controls, and just about anything that can be drawn on the screen.īefore there was a GUI, there was what we now call “character mode.” A “character” is a letter, number, or special item, including punctuation marks. You’re most familiar with programs that sport a Graphical User Interface, or GUI. The fundamental problem here, if you want to call it that, is that there are two types of programs. The good news is, there’s a simple trick that covers it: run a Windows Command Prompt, and type your command into that instead. Start-Run is incredibly useful, but it’s not appropriate for everything.
It’s only obvious if you’ve been using PCs since before there was Windows, and before there was a GUI.
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