"transparent skin" (new user Q)

Nancy Head head.n at mvumail.mivu.org
Mon Jul 7 06:28:16 UTC 2003


Actually, both Ned's and Alan's suggestions worked for me. Thanks to both!!
:)

At this point, I don't yet understand the distinction between "painting *on*
the working area itself" vs. "making a separate object to go *in* the
working area"... but maybe that's not critical to the user for this
tutorial??

The advantage to Alan's suggestion is that you wouldn't have to explain
accessing the correct "halo," and "what is a 'halo' anyhow?" to a new user.
(I easily figured it out... but it was not very clear from Ned's
explanation... but I'm also not sure how to improve upon what he said to
me.)

The advantage to Ned's suggestion is that the user doesn't need to keep
clicking on the "paintbrush" icon, then "Save" button, then "yellow arrow,"
then "paintbrush," etc. to keep toggling back and forth between instructions
and workspace.


Perhaps a solution might be to add a button in the tutorial window
(instructions) that will do the same as selecting the "paint" halo for the
"Working area" without explaining how to access this manually. That can come
in a later tutorial, if the main goal is just to show how the tools work. At
the end of the tutorial you could show how to use the "Navigator" bar to
bring up the "Paint" tool for more practice.

In other words, change the order of the tasks a little in the tutorial so
the beginning focuses on using the Paint tool (which is the main focus
anyway) by "automating" the part where the workspace is accessed. At the end
of the tutorial, show how to bring up the Paint tool via the Navigator bar.
At this point the user will no longer need to "read" the tutorial so the
"skin" may not be a problem (so long as the user is told to "Keep" or "Toss"
in order to escape the "skin").


On to the next tutorial...  :)

Nancy



> -----Original Message-----
> From: squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org]On Behalf Of Ned
> Konz
> Sent: Monday, July 07, 2003 1:25 AM
> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
> Subject: Re: "transparent skin" (new user Q)
>
>
> On Sunday 06 July 2003 09:45 pm, Alan Kay wrote:
> > I think what Nancy needs to know is that you terminate painting
> > (and thus get rid of the translucent skin) by clicking on the
> > "Keep" button (to keep your drawing) or on the "Toss" button to get
> > out without saving your drawing.
>
> Right. But then you can't follow the tutorial as easily.
>
> > The problem is that (at least in my current plugin) the preference
> > is set to have the translucent skin cover the entire screen -- and
> > this effectively prevents her from going to the next page of the
> > tutorial. The tutorial should either be in a flap, or the skin
> > should not be full screen. This seems to be a new problem, the skin
> > used to not come up full screen.
>
> The preference "unlimitedPaintArea" seems to be on (at least in my
> Squeakland image).
>
> And unfortunately, this preference seems to be global, rather than
> per-project.
>
> But when it's off, the skin is still too big to hit the buttons.
>
> > Ned's suggestion below will not quite work, in that you would be
> > painting *on* the working area itself rather than making a separate
> > object to go *in* the working area.
>
> Ah, right.
>
> Sorry to mislead anyone.
>
> --
> Ned Konz
> http://bike-nomad.com
> GPG key ID: BEEA7EFE
>
>



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