[squeak-dev] http://try.squeak.org/ is great but...

Chris Muller asqueaker at gmail.com
Thu Feb 23 22:31:05 UTC 2017


> Even if it is this slow?

Well, without knowing what all your/our explicit goals for
try.squeak.org are, I think my default answer is still "yes".  Its
definitely slower, but as Jecel alluded, the faster 2.2 presents a
different compromise of usability for its speed.

As neither is meant to allow the user to do anything practical,
usability might not matter much.  That leaves 5.1 the advantage of at
least showing them what Squeak looks like today, and poke around the
IDE.  A clear message about what it is, why its slow, and what the
future plans are and where to get the fast native version would be
much more interesting and attractive to new visitors.

At a minimum, I hope you will consider clarifying the text on the
page to be more upfront and clear that this is a **very old version** of
Squeak, and explain why not seeing the latest.  Currently, it isn't until the
third paragraph that it says "2.2" and "1998" but even that does not
inform unfamiliar users that this isn't the latest and greatest
version of Squeak.  IMO, the, "more demanding" hint in the last
sentence is too subtle, most won't get the meaning even if they
skimmed that far.

Best,
  Chris

PS -- for the 5.1 idea, what if, instead of a black box and orange
progress bar (when loading the image), if it could display a static
picture of the modern 5.1 desktop in its initial state with a much
more subtle "loading" message overlaid... that way, new visitors read
the text on the page, the appearance of slowness might be diminished..

> http://try.squeak.org/#zip=[http://files.squeak.org/5.1/Squeak5.1-16549-32bit/Squeak5.1-16549-32bit.zip,http://files.squeak.org/5.0/SqueakV50.sources.zip]
>
> - Bert -
>
> On Thu, Feb 23, 2017 at 4:42 AM, Chris Muller <asqueaker at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > I think that there should be a shortcut like "http://try.squeak.org/5.1"
>> > to
>> > run Squeak 5.1 with SqueakJS.
>>
>> Yes!
>>
>
>
>
>


More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list