Hi Charles,
Sorry for responding late but something got my attention in this thread and so I reviewed it and found an interesting observation in your original post.
The Squeak 3.0 greeting screen is pretty, but doesn't give a newcomer much idea of where to go and what to do. Squeak 2.5 was much better.
It's interesting that you say that. I actually went back and compared the 2.5 and 3.0 startup screen without finding much of a difference. Both of them have a "Welcome To" window (with pretty much the same stuff) both have a "Getting started" window (again with pretty much the same stuff) and both have a couple of demo projects (with 3.0 having even more stuff in there). So what exactly is it that you find better in 2.5 than in 3.0 (this is not a rhetorical question - I'm really interested in finding out what you liked better in 2.5)?
Morphic is worth being proud of, but either the tutorials need to reflect it, or, possibly better, the initial screen should look more like that of Squeak 2.5, and the "World of Squeak" should be first called from a workspace window, and later a part of the introductions should tell how to set it as the default first screen.
I don't quite understand what you mean here. Can you give an example of "calling 'Welcome to Squeak' from a workspace window" and what exactly people should do in order to get it as the default first screen?!
This would give people a workable intro without reducing the power or convenience. (If I hadn't previously briefly looked at Squeak 2.5 I'd really have been lost.)
Again, can you say a bit about where exactly you would've been lost?!
Cheers, - Andreas