On Jan 25, 2008 8:09 PM, Juan Vuletich <juan at jvuletich.org> wrote:
> To me, the big WOW! is: "The framework is fully in Smalltalk; there are
> no "primitive" widgets or hidden functionality.

Most of the GUI frameworks I work with are like this, so that's why I
wasn't wowed by it.

> This means that there
> are no restrictions to how a morph will appear and react. There are
> morphs that behave like the widgets usually found, and therefore
> conventional interfaces can be built.

Yes, Morphs are definitely more "alive" then components from other
systems (though in a live system like Smalltalk I would expect nothing
less).

>But there are more interesting
> visual metaphors like CurveMorph, FishEyeMorph, EnvelopeEditorMorph, or
> SpectrumAnalyzerMorph (see the next section with a Squeak at hand to
> know them). And the framework is open end extensible. It s not difficult
> to make new visual metaphors for our own objects, which are perfectly
> integrated in the system. This makes Morphic the ideal environment to
> experiment, learn and write new styles in user interfaces, breaking away
> from what commercial programming tools allows us to do."

Commercial programming tools allow you to do much of this now.  In
fact C# can even add methods to built in classes.  The rest of the
world is catching up! :)

> Have you seen the ARK and Self videos? Maybe they enlighten you.

I did.  Honestly after using your pointers to dig a bit deeper, I
guess I like Morphic over all and see it already has some of the
things I wanted to implement.  Needs a major spring cleaning though
(hence the millions of projects to do so). :)