Comments welcome: designer look for squeak - User friendliness..

Serg Koren Serg at VisualNewt.com
Sat Mar 30 14:15:03 UTC 2002


Agreed.  A more "modern/techy/stylish" look would open Squeak to new
users more.

Another perceived problem (and somewhat mine), is that Squeak is a
"developer's" toy in the sense it's meant for people interested in
working ON Squeak, and not for those that want to USE Squeak.
Everything about this list SCREAMS it...yes everyone is helpful to
newbies, but the main goal of this list appears to be in improving
Squeak itself, rather than using it to do real work on a day-to-day
basis.  

A real problem (again related to this list) is that to a newbie, Squeak
is a moving target.  There are changesets, and fileins, and enhancements
and so on released every day on this list and to corporate types this
sounds like "Squeak is undone and unstable, why should I bet on
something that is never done...  I want to make money, not spend time
updating my software."  Yes there are websites and the Swikis, but this
list is the most active "support" component, and as such it's often
confusing and frustrating to newbies who are looking for help on how to
do simple things and they have to wade through tons of emails (several
hundred a day at times) when all they want is a simple answer to a
simple/dumb problem they may have.

Squeak needs to move away from being a toy for developers, for testing
their latest theory, and move into usability and "friendliness".  Squeak
is like Linux; it keeps trying (eToys are great) but the core product is
still too cumbersome to use for most people.

Maybe a "beginner's" Squeak would be good...stripped of everything
(sound, speech, web browser, etc etc etc) except the core language, a
more user-friendly, high-tech skinned morphs, and a "beginner's" Squeak
book...something on the order of "Learn Squeak in 12 Hours".

Then allow them to grow at their own speed (rather than dumping the
entire system on them and saying "Oh, it's easy to learn, just jump in
the deep end...you'll get it in a year or so...") by plugging in
modules/components, whatever you want to call them...

Just my two cents,
S 

-----Original Message-----
From: squeak-dev-admin at lists.squeakfoundation.org
[mailto:squeak-dev-admin at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Alan
Kay
Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2002 12:14 AM
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Subject: Re: Comments welcome: designer look for squeak

FWIW --

I'm all for improvements in the look of Squeak in any and all nooks 
and crannies.

Cheers,

Alan

------

At 10:49 PM -0500 3/29/02, Stephan B. Wessels wrote:
>On 3/29/02 7:06 PM, "Norton, Chris" <chrisn at Kronos.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>  If you look at the Swiki, you'll see lots of cool screenshots of
>>  Squeak-tweaks that people have done over the years.  Unfortunately,
most of
>>  these tweaks never got past the "ain't it cool" stage.  The really
hard part
>>  of any project is to find someone who will stay the course and
finish it.
>>
>
>Chris, you are correct.  The work to do this is not a one day job.
However,
>I can tell you, as one of the folks that have done it once, the really
hard
>parts are:
>
>     1.  To apply a "look" across the board requires changes to a lot
of
>classes in the tools themselves.  At this point it's still needing of
>additional refactoring.  And the work to do that AND to the "look" can
be
>overwhelming.
>
>     2.  I never really ever heard positive feedback to finish the work
from
>anyone other than the "newbies".  It could just be me, but it felt like
>getting "skins" or "themes" or the work that Jim Benson had been doing
(what
>do you call that stuff nowadays Jim?) was looked upon as a waste of
time by
>the more senior Squeakers out there.  It was hard to get "Buy-in" on
the
>work and, in my case since the skins project was just my way of
learning
>about drawing things for the first time in Morphic (I was heavy into
MVC
>prior to that project), it was no longer worth the effort. I gave up
and
>went on to other things.  When you make a major change to the product
you
>have to have some level of support for the base factorings you need or
>you'll end up constantly in software maintenance mode.
>
>I agree with the sentiment that a sexy look is good marketing.  I truly
>believe that.  When a product is a pleasure to look at people want to
know
>more about it.  In the case of Smalltalk, after they hopefully see the
>lightness of the language and depth of the class hierarchy they will be
>hooked.
>
>  - Steve


-- 




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