A version of Interface Builder is also used in the development of OpenStep software, and a very similar tool called Gorm exists for GNUstep.

Originally the software was called SOS Interface, and was created by Jean-Marie Hullot whilst he was a researcher at Inria at Rocquencourt near Paris.

He was allowed to retain ownership of the software upon resigning from Inria, and spent a year working it into a fully-featured product, now named Interface Builder[1] and distributed for Macintosh by ExperTelligence in the USA in 1986.

One notable early use of Interface Builder was the development of the first web browser, WorldWideWeb by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, made using a NeXT workstation.

These user interface objects contain items like text fields, data tables, sliders, and pop-up menus.