Here's the reference to eToys: http://www.nakedobjects.org/section6.html


"Perhaps the closest approach to our solution, and certainly one of the
best challenges to the hegemony of MVC, is the Morphic user interface
[Maloney1995]. Using Morphic, application objects can inherit the
ability to render themselves visible to, and manipulable by, the user.
Morphic was originally developed as part of the Self language
[Smith1995], and subsequently taken forward within the Squeak language
[Ingalls1997] - see figure. Squeak provides the user with a very strong
sense of direct interaction with the application objects themselves. The
user can select any object and invoke display-related as well as
business-specific behaviours directly - even when the objects are moving
around the screen. Hence Squeak has blurred the line between programming
and using a system. However, although Squeak clearly has general-purpose
potential (in the words of the Squeak central team, Squeak is 'Smalltalk
as it was meant to be'), most of the emphasis to date has been on
educational applications, animated graphics, and multi-media authoring
tools. It has yet to be applied to the design of transactional business
systems.

[ screenshot: http://www.nakedobjects.org/oo-background/squeak.png ]

The Morphic user interface, originally developed as part of the Self
language and now adopted by Squeak (pictured) is one of the most
comprehensive challenges to the Model-View-Controller paradigm. All
Morphic objects inherit the ability to display themselves and to render
their behaviours visible and accessible. As shown in this screenshot,
when the user clicks on an object (in this case the red car), it
displays a 'halo' of small icons around it, which provide standard
manipulation functions. See www.squeak.org and www.squeakland.org for
more details of this exciting open-source project."



-----Original Message-----
From: Andreas Raab [mailto:andreas.raab at gmx.de]
Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 5:22 PM
To: 'The general-purpose Squeak developers list'
Subject: RE: A cleaner Morphic for 3.5 (was: Re: Re-doing Morphic ( Was:
Re:Traits prototype image ))


Todd,

> > I'll give you just one example: If I want to make a button 
> > in eToys, here is what I do. I go to the supplies flap, grab
> > a rectangle...
> 
> [snip].
> 
> Uh huh.  Why don't you grab a button object instead? 

Because this was an example and if you want to do anything interesting
it's
almost never the case that there is already something prefab'ed. The
example
can be extended to any point you want - including business apps. If you
don't know what I mean then check out www.nakedobjects.org (and if you
read
the book you will find that eToys are prominently featured in it ... and
now
guess why).