I recently found the Squeakland site and thought it would be neat to let my kids try it out. Unfortunately, when I went into the tutorials, I ran into problems on the background and the first (painting) tutorial. I'm wondering if there is a known problem running the Squeak plug-in on IE6 on Win XP (though the problem still exists after I escape the browser), or perhaps the tutorials aren't quite ready.
In the case of the background, the right edge of the text is cut off (I'd guess about 3-5 characters worth) making it hard to read the article. Also, if I left click on the text, then use the mouse scroll wheel (expecting to scroll down in the text), the pictures jump from the right to the left side, covering the text. I can't figure out how to move them back off the text.
In the case of the painting etoy, after escaping the browser and clicking on the paintbrush icon as directed on page 1, a transparent skin covers the entire screen, not just the working area. If I try to click on the 'page' buttons, I end up painting on them instead. I can only get rid of the skin by choosing 'keep' or 'toss' on the palette. I can't follow the rest of the tutorial, because the paint operation isn't staying within the workarea. Is there a way to fix these problems?
Finally, it's not clear what to do after reaching the end of a tutorial lesson. The 'prev/next' buttons on the navigator tab don't seem to do anything, so I was left with selecting 'quit' which took me back to my browser with a blank screen and a message "Squeak Plugin <inactive>". Is there a way to navigate to the next tutorial or at least back to the webpage?
Thanks,
Hi, Greg - Sorry to learn about your hassles.... As far as known problems with IE6 on Win XP I leave that to our expert, Mike, to address....and will ask him to respond to you. As far as your trouble with the Paint tutorial -- that Tutorial was written at a time when the Etoy interface was a bit different and that 'onion skin' only covered the painting *area* leaving the remainder of the world/screen uncovered. We are updating/improving that tutorial RIGHT NOW and plan to have a better version there for use very shortly. When you finish a tutorial, the best thing is to "return to the browser" and then use your browser's back button to navigate within the Squeakland site to either do another tutorial or play, explore other areas. Thanks for your willingness, and patience as we grow and improve! cheers, Kim
At 1:16 PM -0500 8/19/03, Greg Brunet wrote:
I recently found the Squeakland site and thought it would be neat to let my kids try it out. Unfortunately, when I went into the tutorials, I ran into problems on the background and the first (painting) tutorial. I'm wondering if there is a known problem running the Squeak plug-in on IE6 on Win XP (though the problem still exists after I escape the browser), or perhaps the tutorials aren't quite ready.
In the case of the background, the right edge of the text is cut off (I'd guess about 3-5 characters worth) making it hard to read the article. Also, if I left click on the text, then use the mouse scroll wheel (expecting to scroll down in the text), the pictures jump from the right to the left side, covering the text. I can't figure out how to move them back off the text.
In the case of the painting etoy, after escaping the browser and clicking on the paintbrush icon as directed on page 1, a transparent skin covers the entire screen, not just the working area. If I try to click on the 'page' buttons, I end up painting on them instead. I can only get rid of the skin by choosing 'keep' or 'toss' on the palette. I can't follow the rest of the tutorial, because the paint operation isn't staying within the workarea. Is there a way to fix these problems?
Finally, it's not clear what to do after reaching the end of a tutorial lesson. The 'prev/next' buttons on the navigator tab don't seem to do anything, so I was left with selecting 'quit' which took me back to my browser with a blank screen and a message "Squeak Plugin <inactive>". Is there a way to navigate to the next tutorial or at least back to the webpage?
Thanks,
-- Greg
Squeakland mailing list Squeakland@squeakland.org http://squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland
--
"Kim Rose" Kim.Rose@viewpointsresearch.org wrote in message news:a05100314bb694f5f325c@[192.168.0.44]...
Hi, Greg - Sorry to learn about your hassles.... As far as known problems with IE6 on Win XP I leave that to our expert, Mike, to address....and will ask him to respond to you. As far as your trouble with the Paint tutorial -- that Tutorial was written at a time when the Etoy interface was a bit different and that 'onion skin' only covered the painting *area* leaving the remainder of the world/screen uncovered. We are updating/improving that tutorial RIGHT NOW and plan to have a better version there for use very shortly. When you finish a tutorial, the best thing is to "return to the browser" and then use your browser's back button to navigate within the Squeakland site to either do another tutorial or play, explore other areas. Thanks for your willingness, and patience as we grow and improve! cheers, Kim
Hi Kim:
Well, from your descriptions, it sounds like the issues are not IE6 related. The changes in the onion-skin behavior were the cause of my main initial problems. I worked around it - but it's probably a show-stopper for someone trying to follow the instructions as written. I can see that your steps for moving to the next tutorial would provide the proper navigation. It would probably be good to have those specific instructions in the first tutorial (and at the bottom of the background) as well.
Based on these differences, I expect that it's likely that the problems I have with the background page might also be due to changes in the EToy interface. I know what it's like to make improvements on a system - unfortunately, without an occasional test/check the tutorials can get out of sync. Good luck on your efforts to get things updated. Squeakland & etoys look like an awesome site & tool. Best wishes,
I just got an e-mail from Miguel Perez letting me know that the paint tutorial has been updated. I went & checked it out and the new placement of the instructions works great - it no longer gets covered by the onionskin. Great job guys! A couple of other notes:
- The paint toolbox still does some funky things at times. For example, if you accidentally (or on purpose) grab it & move it, but let go before leaving the blue tab section, the bottom part of the toolbox disappears (you can't seem to get it back (even selecting . If you keep dragging it below the tab section, once the cursor gets past (below) it, the tab 'rolls up'. Clicking on the tab covers up any part of the toolbox still in that section.
- It would be good to add instructions on how to get to the next tutorial. The current instructions on the 'end' page refers to the arrows at the bottom of the page to move ahead to the second part, but that doesn't work.
- On the Background page, the text still gets chopped of on the right edge
Take care,
squeakland@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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Greg Brunet -
Kim Rose