On Saturday 29 September 2007 6:44 pm, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
Since Etoys is all about encouraging kids to assemble widgets, shouldn't the default size be reduced? I tried various sizes and found 320x300 to be a nice default. It leaves enough of the screen estate visible (for picking colors) while giving enough area to draw small objects.
defaultPaintingExtent ^320 @ 300
Interesting thought, in particular since we still have the full- screen drawing capability for the background (the World's paint halo- handle).
The onion skin is resizable so advanced squeakers can adapt it to their needs. It is just that a large skin encourages beginners to use Etoys like a painting program. The skin should act as a mould ("build a new part") and not a canvas.
Unfortunately, the Etoy demo reinforces the canvas metaphor by painting wheels separately on the car :-(. Instead, a wheel could have been painted once and made into a stamp, and then stamped four times around the car.
Regards .. Subbu