Hi Joshua & co.

I promised myself that I wouldn't get into a row about menus again, but I
find that I can't help myself...  ;-)

I am aware of the "flaps" feature (thanks Scott Wallace!), and I thank you
and several others for your work on keyboard enhancements.  My concern is
more basic, however.  When you first launch Squeak, for the first time, you
get a nice, light green window with 7 "Play with Me" teaser projects, a
"Welcome To..." workspace and a "Getting Started..." workspace.

Now, let's say that you are me, and you accidentally close some or all of
these "windows" (what a drag -- I had to re-download Squeak because I had
already nuked the .ZIP file!).  All you are left with is the light green
tableau.  Now, you'd better hope you are handy with a mouse, because you are
dead in the water without one!  In fact, after several attempts, I have yet
to figure out how to restore the "Play with Me" windows to my image after I
close them.  I think they might be removed during the release process; I
would be interested in looking at the source code for some of these... but I
digress.

OK.  So now you have the light green screen and you'd like to actually do
something useful.  Now you have to explore the popup mouse menus.  This can
be a bit frustrating.  I think I'd prefer it if the base Squeak window, e.g.
the light green window, had flaps, or a "Start Bar", or a floating tool
button bar that can't be accidentally deleted, or a drop down window menu
across the top of the unmaximized main window (e.g. like virtually every
word processing application).  All sorts of useful buttons/options could be
displayed.  A few come to mind immediately:  "browser...", "workspace...",
"file list...", "preferences...", "sample applications..." (would restore
the "Play with me" windows to their default look), "update from server",
"morphic project", "MVC project", "maximize / minimize", "quit", etc..

Perhaps this could be a preference that you could "turn off" if you're not a
newbie and you like a clean window.  I believe that I saw somebody had a
similar idea before (it might have been Reiner or STP).  The idea isn't new,
but I think it would make Squeak a lot more "user friendly" if we didn't
have to peek & poke for features under mouse buttons.

Anyway, that's my biggest "presentation beef" with Squeak.  There are so
many great UI features in Squeak, especially in Morphic.  It seems a shame
that nobody has implemented a SystemWindowWithMenu class or your basic
ToolButtonBar class.  Maybe I'll have to find the time to do this myself.

Ciao for now!

---==> Chris