[Newbies] Talk to me of Browsers

Matthew Fulmer tapplek at gmail.com
Sat Feb 23 03:57:27 UTC 2008


On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 09:54:23PM -0500, Jeffrey Straszheim wrote:
> Howdy,
>
> I am a relative Squeak newcomer and I'm trying to get a sense of what sorts 
> of options there are for me to work with.  My question tonight regards 
> browsers.
>
> I am running the 3.9 (7067) image and am using the default browser it comes 
> with.  However, I've loaded up some other images and they include a 
> different browser that seems to support Traits (whatever they are exactly) 
> and more refactoring tools.  However, after some brief experiments that 
> browser seemed a bit buggy to me -- I couldn't browse instance variables 
> for instance, and asking for the 'senders' of a message threw an exception.
>
> On these mailing lists I've seen folks talk about: the "Traits Browser", 
> the "Omni Browser", and so on.  On SqueakMap I see something called the 
> Refactoring Browser that requires something else called "AST".
>
> Can someone give me a breakdown of the currently supported browsers and why 
> I might choose one over the other.
>
> I don't mind advice of the sort: "Use this one!"  That would be great.

There are only two important usable Browsers: the old Morphic
ones, which herald from ancient days, and the new OmniBrowser.

Official images only come with the old Morphic ones. Squeak-dev
and squeak-web images come with 3:

- a buggy OmniBrowser called "OBMultiSelectBrowserAdapter" (the
  default)
- a pretty stable OmniBrowser called "OBSystemBrowserAdapter"
- the old one called "Browser"

Just to be confusing, all three name their window "System
Browser". If you have a squeak-dev image, and a buggy browser,
change the default browser:

In the upper-left corner of the browser window is the window
menu. Press it and "Choose Default Browser". For the stable
OmniBrowser with new features and not so many bugs, choose the
OBSystemBrowserAdapter. For the rock-solid old browser, choose
Browser.

I don't really know what new features OmniBrowser offers, but
they are mostly related to traits and refactoring stuff. Traits
are a multiple-inheritance thing that not many people use, and I
don't know what the refactoring stuff is for. I use normal
browsers. They work great. But I also use old images that don't
support OmniBrowser.

-- 
Matthew Fulmer -- http://mtfulmer.wordpress.com/
Help improve Squeak Documentation: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/808


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