Re: FW: Re: Definition of wizard - from "Alice in Wonderland"???

[Beth Agnew <beth -dot- agnew -at- senecac -dot- on -dot- ca>]

Edwin's right -- wizards do certain tasks for you. They are particularly 
useful for getting the user more quickly from one place to another in 
the program. Advanced users tend to bypass wizards to do things their 
own way. I prefer to give users the choice to use the wizard or hide 
it/turn it off.

Some programs have what is really input assistance. Even though it's 
called a wizard, all it does is open a pick list, show you a file 
browser, or give you choice to make, it doesn't really do any tasks for 
you. To me, that is not a wizard. In Excel, for example, being able to 
select a function from a list and then select the cells or values to 
build that function, is not really a wizard. You have to know about 
functions in order to do that operation. A wizard would ask you what you 
wanted the function to accomplish, and then build it for you.
--Beth

Edwin Skau wrote: