Netscape 4.7x on MacOS 8.6.
Visited http://www.squeakland.org.
Noticed the small and rather faint and fuzzy medium blue letters against
an only slightly paler blue background (c'mON people, have some regard
for visitors' eyesight) saying "ACTIVE ESSAYS".  Went there.
Visited the page, which says "Authoring Squeak" (which sounds like
writing Squeak, not like writing _in_ Squeak).  It says
'An "Active Essay" is a new kind of literacy', which is surely a
category mistake.  (Active Essays are a kind of _document_, not a
kind of _skill_).  There are no visible links on the page (other
than the navbar at the left).  Wild guess: maybe the image is a link.
Click on it.  Arrive at download page.
  1. Download Squeak.		(Done, actually it's the plugin)
  2. Run the installer.		(Done, although I don't know where it
				 thought my browser's directory is, because
				 it didn't tell me.)
  3. Click here when you're done.

	HEY!  NOTHING HAPPENS!
	Long pause.
	Hey!  "javascript:proceed()" appears in the Location: box!

It is very bad manners to require Javascript to be switched on
*without warning* anywhere in the text.

Quit.  Restarted.  Squeak plugin started up said "Initialising
Squeak security", eventually said something about updates being
available.  I elected to update, and several minutes later am
still waiting for squeakland to reply.

* Did this thing send some kind of message to Squeakland asking
  about updates *without asking me*?
* If this kind of delay is likely, perhaps a timeout would be helpful.

Quit again.  Restarted.  This time no "Initialising Squeak security"
message.  Got into project.  So, I can move stuff around on this page.
What else can I do?  Eventually realise that the tiny black marks
(I _think_ they are
    - (cent sign) < (bullet) (paragraph) (section) > (Idunno) +
 and something can't discriminate on the far right)
which really _don't_ contrast well with the blue/purple background
are some kind of navigation controls, possibly BookMorph ones disguised
by a character set mishap.

If this is a new kind of literacy, give me the old one, where it
was understood that readers had to be able to READ the symbols.

Page 2 of the evolution essay.  There's an illustration there that I
recognise from "After Man".  I enjoyed "After Man" very much, and I
recognise a rabbuck when I see one.  What I don't see here is any
copyright notice or acknowledgement of copyright, and as the book is
comparatively recent, I'm sure it's still in copyright.  Should I
be mistaken in my impression that I recognise this specific illustration,
the animals described in that book are wholly unreal, being the products
of the author's biologically informed imagination, and as such, almost
certainly being intellectual property.  It's not clear to me that a
picture of entirely imaginary animals is consonant with the sermon
the author of the active essay is preaching, either.

For some reason some (all?) of the ScriptEditor boxes
have a yellow box (the content of the TwoWayScrollPane;
come to that, the TwoWayScrollPage itself)which is *far* narrower than
the owning ScriptEditor box.  (Maybe 1/3rd of the available space?)
But I can't resize the small box using a halo button, because the halo
doesn't include the size button.

I eventually arrive at a page "Evolve a Sentence" which says
    ...
    1. Click on <b>select best</b> to clear out the Kids field.
But there is no "select best" button, and clicking on the bold text
doesn't work either.

Skipping a lot, the last page says
	How Many?
	To get an idea of how big some big numbers are, let's
	play the How Many game.  How many drops of water
	are there in the Ocean?
	
	<insert volume calculator here>
	
	...
	the number of the right by the number on the left.

Then the whole thing ends, up in mid-air.  (The line <insert...> is
as it appears on the screen.)

The page before last has another illustration from After Man; I think
the bird is called a "flooer".

On one of the earlier pages, it is not "me thinks it is like a weasel"
but "methinks (= it seems to me) it is like a weasel".

Would it hurt if the navigation elements were rather larger
and more contrasty?  Would it hurt if they were words?
[Delete|First|Previous|Menu|Structure|Next|Last|AddNew]

As an argument for evolution it fails to impress.
I've had "On Automatic" running for quite a while, and if anything
could convert me from a belief in (at least within-"kind") evolution,
this example would.  If anyone wanted to demonstrate that evolution
can be singularly ineffective, even with the odds heavily loaded in
its favour, they couldn't do better than this example.  (No sex.  So
no crossover.  So _painfully_ slow evolution.)

But above all, I'm here because someone answered the question
"how do I learn about writing Active Essays" with the answer
"Squeakland".  Nope, nothing here about how to write one.

OK, let's try another example.

"Etoys and SimStories in Squeak"

I don't know if it counts as an active essay, but it's texts and morphs,
AND THE TEXT IS TRUNCATED AT THE RIGHT MARGIN.

        Etoys are computer environments that help people learn id
     by building and playing around with them  They help        
     "omniuser"-usually a child-create a satisfying and enjoyab
     computer model of the idea and give hints for how the idea ca
     expanded.  SimStories are longer versions of Etoys that that-lik
     essays-string everal ideas together to help the learner produc

When I use the halo, I don't see any resize box.  It turns out that
I have to scroll down to the bottom to see it, and it's there after
all.  (Well, I've learned something.  A halo can be too big to fit
on the screen.)  

Start again with that one.  There is a button labelled "hopper move"
off to the right of the GeeMail morph.  _Below_ the GeeMail morph is
a Text morph "To make grosshopper move across the field" which looks
as though it is meant to be a caption for the Button morph.  Also
below the GeeMail morph is a yellow ellipse which looks uncommonly as
though it was meant to be the Sun in the PlayField.

I do not for one instant believe that Alan Kay would have released
this project that scrambled.  So what's gone wrong?