"A Word of Caution" to all newcomers

John Pierce john.raymond.pierce at gmail.com
Thu Dec 2 14:01:05 UTC 2004


>  I've spend some time trying to figure out whether I could use Squeak for my
> Introductory IT course for biology-students, but what have scared me away
> from that is that Squeak is so completely "strange" to use for windows
> users. This plus the fact that everything can be changed or deleted would
> take focus away from the real issues in the course...

I'm not sure where the new Diego L&F is these days.  The last I saw of
it was the Squeak 3.8a unstable stream.  In Squeak 3.8b from the ftp
site, it doesn't come pre-installed.  Anyways, I was able to find a
relatively new screen shot of his L&F here at:
http://tinyurl.com/4jy3r .

I don't think the new look and feel tries to emulate the windows look
and feel though -- but it is much more pleasant to use than the
standard style.

> Create a 2 mouse button look and feel: right button open menu left button
> selects items. 

I'd be curious if this could be reworked into a preference as well,
but I must say that in my organization our windows users have been
using Morphic and the mouse quite successfully without changing how
the buttons work.

Lastly, Ben Schroeder and myself have worked up an alternate L&F on
our squeak source (squeak.saltypickle.com/LookEnhancements) that we
enjoy quite a bit.  It is also the L&F that we use in my organization
with great success.  You are welcomed to try it out.

The only unfortunate thing I know about any of the L&F's that are
available is that they are not preference oriented, but rather alter
your system somewhat permanently.  In the case of our L&F, you could
always try to un-install the MCZ package and maybe it will go away.
I've never done it though -- so save a copy of your image first should
you really not like our L&F.

Regards,

John



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