[Newbies] Can I make a window outside of the "world?"

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 07.04.2011, at 04:25, Rick H. wrote:

> Hi all. 
> 
> I'd like to make an operating system window, that can go outside of 
> the "world."  I found a nice Sample Image Viewer by Michael Davies.  It uses a 
> SystemWindow, but it also is constrained to be within the Squeak box.  Do you 
> understand what I am thinking of?  Is it possible? 

Everything is possible ;)

But it is not supported out-of-the-box. There are several experiments, but nobody is using them for production AFAIK.

Smalltalk used to be the sole operating system of the machine. The whole idea of extending screen real estate with overlapping windows came from Smalltalk originally, after all. The spirit of doing everything inside that single system still lives on, though it has become weaker over time.

Many Squeak developers value that it looks and behaves identically across platforms, and that everything is changeable. Using OS windows and widgets would go against that, and so none of the native UI extensions got much traction in the community.

- Bert -