[squeak-dev] presentations, projects, tabbed interfaces, and paper as a UI metaphor

Brad Fuller bradallenfuller at gmail.com
Wed Jul 2 20:44:15 UTC 2008


On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 12:48 PM, Herbert König <herbertkoenig at gmx.net> wrote:
> Hello Brenda,
>
> B> Quick summary of a long email: I have a couple of months free, which I
> B> am thinking of spending writing or helping write some classes that let
> B> me treat Squeak as smart paper.  To me, this seems related to BookMorph
> B> and its subclasses and rewrites, how Projects are treated, and how
> B> people give presentations using Squeak.
>
> I use a Squeak on an USB Stick for smart paper. Most people have a
> computer running, so why find a place for my laptop and wait till it
> starts. I use projects not BookMorphs.
>
> Sometimes it's days when I don't program a single line and my visual
> memory helps me to start quickly if I'm coming back to a familiar
> place. So a development image also quickly collects lots of projects
> with visual sketches, documentation, textual sketches or arrangements
> of Browsers and other dev tools.
>
> Whatever you decide to do please consider:
>
> - a linear structure is not enough (maybe it is for presentations).
>
> - it is helpful to quickly move or copy complex content between
> arbitrary pages or projects. BookMorph is better than projects in this
> regard. MindManager is very good at this (due to its fixed tree
> structure). Hey I should try the trashcan for this purpose.
>
> - move content between images, at least of the same version.
>
> - many ways to navigate the structure, a World full of projects is
> nice up to 20, less on smaller displays. Maybe BookMorphs sort pages
> but auto scaling and page expanding on mouse over could help.
>
> - a quick (visual) navigation should be at hand anywhere, indented
> lists (like jump to project) are not agood solution. I think it should
> be full screen and maybe semi transparent.
>
> - search capabilities, text, Objects of class X on which pages.
>
> - type in the air like MathMorphs and then decide what it shall be.
>
> - draw in the air to get lineMorphs
>
> All imho. Gave me something to think about.
>

Those are great ideas. I started on a similar idea. I wanted to create
a portfolio of multimedia objects and started with the OneNote idea. I
didn't like the way it was organized (I like something like
www.thebrain.com), but I like it that you can easily cut and paste
anything on a page (like from the web), put links anywhere to call a
web browser or a link to a file. I especially lie that you can click
the page and a text object would appear to edit as the default. I
added a subclass of bookmorph and changed how it acted to be more like
OneNote.

I also thought it'd be great to be able to share portfolios with other
people via internet. Not necessarily send them, but to be able to go
to a "Portfolio Browser" to search for other shared portfolios and
include them in an appropriate portfolio of my own. The thought is to
build up a knowledge base of a certain topic. You don't have
everything, but it'd be nice to include clips from the web, links from
the web, and other portfolio's to your own. .


-- 
Brad Fuller
www.bradfuller.com


More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list