Wizard (software)

Publisher's "Page Wizards" instead provided a set of forms to produce a complete document layout, based on a professionally designed template, which could then be manipulated with the standard tools.

Wizards were intended to learn from how someone used a program and anticipate what they may want to do next, guiding them through more complex sets of tasks by structuring and sequencing them.

As early as 1989, Microsoft discussed using voice and talking heads as guides, but multimedia-capable hardware was not yet widespread.

The "Setup Assistant" is run when the Macintosh starts up out of the box or after a fresh installation, and a similar process also takes place on Apple iOS.

The Microsoft Manual of Style (Version 3.0) advises technical writers to refer to these assistants as "wizards" and to use lowercase letters.

[10] The following screenshots show part of the seven-step installation wizard for the operating system Kubuntu.

Wizards have been criticized for being ponderous, stripping questions of context, and obscuring the underlying operations.