Hi all. My interest is with old systems, to see if they are still relavant today. I would be interested to see if people think that drag and drop GUI builders are the future for the next 5 years, or is there a different paradigm, like Dynamic Land that will take over in the immediate future.

For me drag-n-drop is just one of many UI manipulation technics. It's convenient and useful, but it's not something that you could build whole model of human-computer interaction around. Drag-n-drop may play a role in the future, but there must be something else along it.

What other models apart from drag and drop are there?

I wouldn't call drag-n-drop a model. It's just one manipulation technic that allows humans to interact. How this technic gonna be used, in what kind of programming environment -- whole different story. These manipulation technics are like syntax for visual programming. You may have similar syntax in totally different languages. You may have similar drag-n-drop interface in totally different visual programming environments. Try to enumerate manipulation technics that I have seen: 1) Drag-n-drop. Allows to move visual objects from one area to other. Also allows to connect different areas. Usually it's done with mouse pointer or long tap with movement on multi-touch. 2) Zoom in/out. Allows quickly navigate between different levels of structure. Works only for tree like structures, that have some kind of root or top. Doesn't work for graphs. Usually it's done with mouse scroll or with two fingers on multi-touch. 3) Disconnection. When you have two connected objects that you want to disconnect (the opposite operation of drag-n-drop). On multi-touch you just long tap object and shake it, until it disconnects. Some manipulation technics that should exist, but I haven't seen it yet: 3) Branching or copying. Some kind of gesture that allows to make an independent copy of selected object, start a new branch, version.

It is a sad fact that Apple, which took the Nokia touchscreen invention and ran with it to massive success, has blocked touchscreen evolution in their desktop OS, and let MS push forward in that area. And because Mac OSX programming is a substantial home of programming (90% in web), touch interfaces have not developed there. We see it all the time in sci-fi movies where people interact with their hands with computers very fluidly, and if apple will stop blocking it the whole touch thing could take off, but for now you have to offer a mouse fallback, and frankly you can't build a touchy feely interface and a mouse one, it is just too hard to reconcile the very different aspects; one is very precise but only has 2 buttons typically, and the other has many gestures possible which cannot be mapped to a mouse easily. For my IOS apps i never asked for more than tap, because i found that people are lousy at knowing how fast to double tap, and you can't discover gesture support in a program, so some fancy gesture command will never happen. In order for touch to work, you have to train millions of customers in a very consistent interaction movements, not an easy thing. Touch interfaces will thus continue to roll out slowly over the next 20 years. Voice interfaces will end up winning anyway because it is so easy and takes no coordination at all.

Somewhat of a tangent re sci-fi movies - their screens tend to still be vertical, which means that users would have their shoulders flexed for most of the time working with them. This is not a good idea from a human factors perspective - it's tiring, uncomfortable and (IIRC) eventually damaging. Horizontal/angled screens seem more feasible (although there may be issues there with constant neck flexion)