WIMPÜ

acronym Also written Wimp, wimp, or WIMPS (Science and Technology) In computing jargon, a user interface incorporating a set of software features and hardware devices (such as windows (see window°), icons, mice (see mouse), and pull-down menus) that are designed to make the computer system simpler or less baffling for its user. Etymology: Formed on the initial letters of Windows, Icons, Mice; the fourth initial is variously explained as standing for Program, Pointer, or Pull-down. History and Usage: WIMPs were developed by Rank Xerox during the seventies and became commercially available in the first half of the eighties. The package of features--in which different tasks are allocated to different portions of the screen (windows), with small symbolic pictures (icons) and lists of options (menus) representing the different operations which may be selected by clicking on them with the mouse--has come to be associated particularly with Apple computers but was a general feature of the popular computing boom of the mid eighties. By the end of the decade, the idea of WIMP was already thought a little outdated by computer scientists, who had moved on to the excitements of GUI (graphical user interface), an even more advanced interface which would be needed for the development of multimedia. An intriguing WIMPS (Windows, Icons, Mouse and Pointer-based System) implementation that does a creditable job of imitating the workings of the Apple Macintosh. Which Computer? July 1985, p. 35 The Apple Lisa is generally credited for being the first machine to make use of wimps. In fact the idea first originated in the Palo Alto, California laboratories of Rank Xerox, but it was the Lisa which turned it into a marketable product. The Australian 13 May 1986, p. 45 With Presentation Manager the Wimp...will find its way onto the desks of millions of office workers. Computer Weekly 28 Apr. 1988, p. 26 Using the term GUI is stretching things more than a little, although the no longer fashionable WIMP tag just about applies. Personal Computer World July 1990, p. 128