Squeak IDE Look-n-Feel

Thomas Kuehne kuehne at informatik.uni-kl.de
Wed Dec 13 10:01:05 UTC 2000


Doug Way wrote:

> Still, after seeing a few of these threads pop up over the last couple
> of years, I think there are a few things that there is some consensus on:
> [...]

I am summarizing here:

o No native widgets, except for special application development.
o Do not try to imitate another look and feel
  (allows Squeak to be the role model in UI Design rather than vice versa).
o Better font support.
o Do some immediate cosmetic changes.

I second everything Doug said and would like to add that better font support is really important.
I have recently installed the BDF fonts and it is such a big improvement to have Helvetica available for browsers. It is so much easier to read on a computer screen compared to New York.
Many thanks to Jay Carlson for making these available and to Bob Arning for providing the 2.8 patch!

If the 'out-of-the-box' squeak had a number of good fonts to select and an easy, centralized way to change various appearance options with the possibility to save and try out various appearance schemes, that would put the 'ugly look' discussion to an end, I believe.

There are very good arguments to counter the native widget demand but there is no good excuse to turn off people with a -- lets say 'very special' -- look which is not easy to change (It took me several unsuccessful attempts with various approaches and changeset compatibility problems to finally get over the font hurdle).

> I may try to put together a changeset with the above improvements, and
> see how things look.

That'll be great!
What about making the system window borders a bit thicker?
It is always a bit of a precision job to hit the border with the mouse pointer so that resizing is possible.

Cheers,

    Thomas

--
Dr. Thomas Kuehne
0178 4314387, http://www-agce.informatik.uni-kl.de/~kuehne
The difficulty in doing research is to find the right questions
so that all the answers come easily. -- TK








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