Hi Damien and everyone else,

>
> Hi Amos,
>
> I would advise you to use a squeak-dev or squeak-web image. See
> http://damien.cassou.free.fr/squeak-dev.html for more information.
> Feel free to ask any question about these images.
>
> I can see 4 ways of loading things in your image:
>
> - Universe: it's a set of packages known to work together. Every
> package you find in the universe browser should be loadable into the
> image. If it's not the case, please report the bug.
> - Monticello: it's a kind of Store. There, you will find latest
> versions of tools, not always stable.
> - SqueakMap: it contains all the packages that have been released for
> Squeak since SqueakMap creation. Most of the packages won't load, but
> you can find things that can't be found anywhere else.
> - Drag&Drop: if you download a file (either .mcz, .st, .sar, .cs...),
> you can always drag & drop it into the squeak desktop and Squeak will
> ask you what to do (load, explore...).
>

Thanks for the info, I'll be sure to have a closer look at those
images and the ways of loading stuff over the weekend. Thanks also to
Ramon for pointing out that your browser customisation has been
"decommissioned" (I'll see what the OmniBrowser is like and then
extend that if there's any additional functionality I want), and to
Herbert for pointing out the explore option (I'd seen it but hadn't
used it, I imagine it can be quite useful in some cases).

>
> > Playing around with a few things, I missed the option to "dive into"
> > an element from an Inspector and then "pop" back out to the previously
> > inspected object(s)
>
>
> you can always press ALT+i (or CTRL+i) on an element to inspect it.
> So, you can "dive into" a field by just pressing this shortcut or
> right clicking and selecting "inspect it".
>
>
> > , so I modified the Inspector class to add those
> > options. Is something like that useful enough to submit the code
> > somewhere for others to load? Or am I re-inventing the wheel and
> > someone's already done that?
>
>
> It can be useful. What have you done exactly?
>

What I've done is to add the ability, like in VW, to "dive into" an
attribute of an object being inspected without opening a new
inspector, i.e. in the same window. So for instance if you inspect
something like, say:

OrderedCollection with: 'abc' with: #(1 2 'def')

then click on the collection's second element, i.e. the Array,
right-click and "dive into" it, the inspector's object is updated to
be the Array instead of the OrderedCollection. You could then dive
further into the SmallIntegers or the ByteString, or "pop" back out to
the previously inspected object. The Inspector instance remembers its
own history, so any number of dives can be retraced to the initial
object. For convenience, the double-click action on a selected
attribute is defined to be "dive into", unless you double-click on
"self" in the inspector, in which case you "pop" back one step. I
haven't found a good way of updating the window title yet, so it's a
bit hacky for now (checking the inspector's dependents for a
SystemWindow doesn't seem very elegant), but otherwise it works great.
Just a convenient way of drilling down through various layers of
objects and being able to back up if need be, without having 16
inspectors cluttering up your screen when you're done ;-)

>
> > Any help or pointers where to read up on this stuff would be greatly
> > appreciated.
>
> Any feedback on your user experience would be greatly appreciated too :-).
>
> --
> Damien Cassou

Certainly looks like I've found the right place to ask questions -
everyone on this list seems very friendly and helpful - thanks again
guys =o)

I've also downloaded the Squeak By Example book and will work my way
through that as time allows to get a feel for all those
Squeak-specific things like Morphs and what-have-yous.

Cheers,

Amos