Dan Ingalls <Dan.Ingalls at disney.com> wrote:
	1.  Bear in mind, also, that our plan for the next release is
	that it will not open up as a screen with a bunch of system
	windows open (hereinafter "IDE"), but rather as a navigable
	portal to Squeak content on the web

*ARRGH*!

Please bear in mind the needs of Squeakers with unreliable network
connections (I used to read news a lot, but had to give up) and students
who are (for sufficiently obvious reasons) not always given off-site
access.

I don't want to deny the importance of the Web.  Although I note that if
there is to be such a strong focus on the Web, Scamper could do with a
few things (like CSS support, is that there yet?) and a whole lot more
speed.

But the Squeak one downloads and installs *must* be usable as a Smalltalk
system right out of the box EVEN IF INTERNATIONAL NETWORK CONNECTION IS
UNAVAILABLE.

Fair enough for the IDE not to be the initial screen (though it's one more
thing to slog through), but it has to be *THERE*, available by a single
click on a prominent visible button in the first screen.

To say "some" content in the image is to suggest (I hope falsely)
"not very much".  It doesn't have to be in the image, but a reasonable
toolkit *does* have to be in the download.

I know all this can be over-ridden by a local guru, and it is possible to
set up an image for students with whatever one wants in it, but I am busy
and am still struggling to learn my way around Squeak myself.  Our system
administrators are also very busy and would certainly not appreciate having
to learn a whole new programming language and environment just to configure
a tool used by only two classes.  (Hey, we're up from one class!)

There are useful things like tutorial material and the very useful
guide to the interface which could helpfully be made single click
accesses from the initial screen, *whether a student's machine is
connected to the net or not*.