Not very visible Squeak-dev set at squeak.org

mmille10 at comcast.net mmille10 at comcast.net
Sat Jul 7 19:53:19 UTC 2007


"And to think, just yesterday there was a complaint that Squeak-dev (and  
SqueakLight) were too visible and caused confusion about what was official."

I had the thought that what might help is to categorize the downloads. I was thinking for the current official version, squeak.org could put it under "Education and Multimedia -- eToys, audio, video, Alice, 3D graphics". The developer image could be on the same page, categorized under "Seaside", and maybe "Smalltalk Coders/Hackers images", to make it more clear that this category is targeted at those who want to work on web projects, or at a lower level in the system. Each could provide a link for further explanation, talking about what each can be used for, if that seems necessary. Some visual cues would help, I'm sure, like showing a screenshot of what eToys looks like in the official version, with the classic "driving the car" demo.

The developer images link could take people to the other page which has the different developer images.

Just throwing out some suggestions. The key to clearing up confusion is to make clear associations in people's minds. The whole point of having different images is that each has certain uses and benefits to different people. I think they should emphasize the areas that people are most likely to have identified with Squeak.

For example, with the online videos of Squeak, people have seen Alan Kay giving demonstrations with the multimedia features, emphasizing education. There have also been some videos on Seaside. There have been Seaside demos done at Rails conferences. Developers know the name. So I would think "multimedia", and "education" would be the two terms most strongly associated with the official version, and "Seaside" with the developer version, though it would be best if some general term(s) were thrown in as well to make it clear that it's not JUST for Seaside development.

---Mark
mmille10 at comcast.net



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