etoys-dev July 2007

etoys-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org

25 participants
63 discussions

[Etoys] Some comments on the olpc Etoys (interface)
by Eduardo Silva 02 Jul '07

02 Jul '07

Hi, I downloaded the image of Etoys from http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Etoys the other day, and have played with it a bit. I used it looking for things that didn't feel right to me. So I jotted down some notes, and here they are : In various parts of Etoys, there is balloon help, which is really nice, especially the programming tiles. But I think the balloon help for the interface is many times is too verbose. The Sugar-like top bar: New Project Button -> balloon text should only say "New Project" instead of "Start a new project" Save Project icon -> balloon text should say "Save a Project. Hold down button to reveal additional publish options" . Take away the "Click here to", and "Hold down _this_ button". In both cases the kid knows that it is a clickable button (all activities have clickable buttons on top), and which button the balloon text is referring to (the one bellow his cursor). This looks like how people used web links many years ago, "click _this link_ to go to my homepage". Find Project icon -> "Find a Project. Hold down button to reveal additional options". Undo icon - When I click it once, it undoes, then I click it again, and it Re-does? There should exist an Redo button next to this one instead. Flags icon -> "Change Language" Neighbourhood and Close icons -> I thought these where in the top frame. Or will etoys replicate the outside frame? And the neighbourhood is way verbose. If the look for the badges are that unobvious that their function should be detailed here, then they probably need improvement? But won't they be XO icons with the friends colors. If so, kids by then will now what they mean. And extra help like "drag objects to give to your friend" could be in the badges themselves. Display icon -> "Select Display Mode", but not sure. For the interface, the text doesn't have to explain in detail every button's function, because most of them are not destructive, and so through experimenting kids will work them out. There's a bit more! I've noticed that when you create a new window, its thumbnail is colored, then when you go inside, the background is gray, and then out and it remains gray. Having multi-colored backgrounds for new Etoys projects was something that I found nice in the past, and even made the environment fun too look at. It would probably be the same for kids. If the problem is contrast, then couldn't you choose less saturated colors, so they became light green, light blues,etc.? The color picker to choose a project's world color is very small and different than all the other windows (the button to "pin" the window is tiny, for example). I think trash should be present in new Projects. When you colapse a morph with the circle halo, it stays collapsed on top of the sugar bar, and uses different button icons. In the script windows, there are two buttons which show some repeated tiles, the chest button and the menu button. The ones they repeat are: Self title, random number title, button down?, button up?, repeat title. The chest icon doesn't follow the style of the neighbours. Also, in the Object Catalog, in the Scripting category there is repeat, button up? and button down? Finally, It would be really handy if there was a button which sent to the trash all of the method tiles scattered on the "desktop". While I'm doing a project/etoy, it becomes tiresome to have to allways trash them, so I just drop them anywhere out of the way and continue my thing. After a while I have a big mess of tiles on screen. I think kids may also behave like this in the beginning, when they are just messing with and trying new tiles (exploring?). But perhaps the Button tiles and "values" tiles could stay. Eduardo ____________________________________________________________________________________ Expecting? Get great news right away with email Auto-Check. Try the Yahoo! Mail Beta. http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/newmail_tools.html

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[Etoys] Problems loading project in the jun2007 etoys image
by Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas 02 Jul '07

02 Jul '07

Hi all, First thanks for all the work in the last image I liked a lot the scaling screen feature and is nice to see how a requested feature goes to the development. (I'm having problems going back from scaled image to the default screen factor but anyway I will not be using the original one on non OLPC machines). I have two questions: * ¿How can I load, save projects? Is not working as in other images. If I try to see the contents on ExampleEtoys is empty and trying to save on OLPC web folder ask for a password and user. * Some friends are working on a content and they need to simulate the effects of gravity on the flux of particles. I remember some Diego Gomez Deck post about a simulation of gas particles, and we try to explore the bouncing atoms, but we need that the particles can flow across two recipients. Any idea about how to make this? Cheers, Offray

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[Etoys] Fwd: Speex encoded audiobooks
by Bert Freudenberg 01 Jul '07

01 Jul '07

Hi Takashi, the audio books below were posted to the OLPC library list. I tried playing lookingglass_01_carroll.spx in etoys (on my Mac for starters). Good thing: it works :) But: (1) the sound quality is worse than when I played it in VLC (2) the image locks up because the file reader service does not return until the whole file is played (3) the SharedQueue in the QueueSound gets ever longer because new buffers are added even if there are still lots of buffers enqueued Not sure what could be done about (1). About (2), we should not fork a different process but let SoundPlayer do its thing. Perhaps something similar like StreamingMonoSound (or can we use this directly?). This should also solve (3). Also, we should put up some visual representation, maybe a mini SoundRecorder without the recording controls, which should be simple once we use a proper StreamingSound. One nice thing would be the ability to stream directly from a URL rather than from a file. Like, so we could make a project that has a morph for each of the Looking Glass chapters and plays them directly from the web ... - Bert - Begin forwarded message: > From: "Philip Macpherson" <philipmac1(a)gmail.com> > Date: June 30, 2007 6:33:34 GMT+02:00 > To: library(a)lists.laptop.org > Subject: Re: Speex encoded audiobooks > > Here's the links to four audiobooks I've uploaded: > http://www.archive.org/details/BlackBeautyLibrivoxSpeex > http://www.archive.org/details/LookingGlassLibrivoxSpeex > http://www.archive.org/details/DotKangarooLibrivoxSpeex > http://www.archive.org/details/TreasureIslandLibrivoxSpeex > _______________________________________________ > Library mailing list > Library(a)lists.laptop.org > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/library

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etoys-dev July 2007