"transparent skin" (new user Q)

Alan Kay Alan.Kay at squeakland.org
Mon Jul 7 15:15:10 UTC 2003


Nancy --

I think what happened is that we changed over to a new website for 
Squeakland about two weeks ago and modernized a few things but didn't 
catch up to all of them in the tutorials. We'll get the tutorials 
redone and more usable over the next week. For now you could try a 
new tutorial that is in HTML, so you can print it out from your 
browser. It's also on the Squeakland site at:

http://www.squeakland.org/school/drive_a_car/html/Drivecar12.html

Comments, suggestions and criticism welcome ...

Cheers,

Alan

At 2:28 AM -0400 7/7/03, Nancy Head wrote:
>Actually, both Ned's and Alan's suggestions worked for me. Thanks to both!!
>:)
>
>At this point, I don't yet understand the distinction between "painting *on*
>the working area itself" vs. "making a separate object to go *in* the
>working area"... but maybe that's not critical to the user for this
>tutorial??
>
>The advantage to Alan's suggestion is that you wouldn't have to explain
>accessing the correct "halo," and "what is a 'halo' anyhow?" to a new user.
>(I easily figured it out... but it was not very clear from Ned's
>explanation... but I'm also not sure how to improve upon what he said to
>me.)
>
>The advantage to Ned's suggestion is that the user doesn't need to keep
>clicking on the "paintbrush" icon, then "Save" button, then "yellow arrow,"
>then "paintbrush," etc. to keep toggling back and forth between instructions
>and workspace.
>
>
>Perhaps a solution might be to add a button in the tutorial window
>(instructions) that will do the same as selecting the "paint" halo for the
>"Working area" without explaining how to access this manually. That can come
>in a later tutorial, if the main goal is just to show how the tools work. At
>the end of the tutorial you could show how to use the "Navigator" bar to
>bring up the "Paint" tool for more practice.
>
>In other words, change the order of the tasks a little in the tutorial so
>the beginning focuses on using the Paint tool (which is the main focus
>anyway) by "automating" the part where the workspace is accessed. At the end
>of the tutorial, show how to bring up the Paint tool via the Navigator bar.
>At this point the user will no longer need to "read" the tutorial so the
>"skin" may not be a problem (so long as the user is told to "Keep" or "Toss"
>in order to escape the "skin").
>
>
>On to the next tutorial...  :)
>
>Nancy
>
>
>
>>  -----Original Message-----
>>  From: squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org
>>  [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org]On Behalf Of Ned
>>  Konz
>>  Sent: Monday, July 07, 2003 1:25 AM
>>  To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
>>  Subject: Re: "transparent skin" (new user Q)
>>
>>
>>  On Sunday 06 July 2003 09:45 pm, Alan Kay wrote:
>>  > I think what Nancy needs to know is that you terminate painting
>>  > (and thus get rid of the translucent skin) by clicking on the
>>  > "Keep" button (to keep your drawing) or on the "Toss" button to get
>>  > out without saving your drawing.
>>
>>  Right. But then you can't follow the tutorial as easily.
>>
>>  > The problem is that (at least in my current plugin) the preference
>>  > is set to have the translucent skin cover the entire screen -- and
>>  > this effectively prevents her from going to the next page of the
>>  > tutorial. The tutorial should either be in a flap, or the skin
>>  > should not be full screen. This seems to be a new problem, the skin
>>  > used to not come up full screen.
>>
>>  The preference "unlimitedPaintArea" seems to be on (at least in my
>>  Squeakland image).
>>
>>  And unfortunately, this preference seems to be global, rather than
>>  per-project.
>>
>>  But when it's off, the skin is still too big to hit the buttons.
>>
>>  > Ned's suggestion below will not quite work, in that you would be
>>  > painting *on* the working area itself rather than making a separate
>>  > object to go *in* the working area.
>>
>>  Ah, right.
>>
>>  Sorry to mislead anyone.
>  >
>>  --
>>  Ned Konz
>>  http://bike-nomad.com
>>  GPG key ID: BEEA7EFE
>>
>>


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