Dear Squeaklander,
We're happy to announce an improved version of Squeak for your use!
If you visit the Squeakland website, and select the "download"
option, you'll get this latest, greatest, version.
MacUsers: You'll meet with success using Safari as your browser. (IE
is no longer supported by Apple and we have found problems
downloading Squeak via IE, so please use Safari.)
The Etoy interface should look and behave as you'd expect. We've
listened to you last school year and this summer, and added some
goodies and fixed some bugs. One thing that may look different is
the main Etoy font. We've made sure we are only using public domain
fonts to ensure our public domain, open source license agreement.
You'll find some new fonts and sizes that work well when making
presentations or booklets. Some of the menus may have a slightly
different look as well, but you'll find the menu options have not
changed.
You'll find some new goodies in the supplies bin/flap including a
"grab patch" tool and a "lasso" which allow you to do screen grabs
and move sketches or parts of sketches around the screen.
Many changes that were made are deeper in the code and "behind the
scenes" to allow for a truly "multilingual" Squeak. You'll see a new
button on the navigator marked "English". This button will allow you
to change the language displayed on the tiles. The version you'll
download will include Spanish and German and we're working on several
more languages which will be available soon.
We are aware of one lingering bug, which we want you to be aware of
and to know we're working hard to fix: When you load an older
project into this new version, since the fonts have changed, you
might find that the text in tiles in the old project may not look
"quite right", i.e. the text may not fit perfectly into the tiles.
Your scripts will still run; this is a "cosmetic" problem only. We
beg your patience and hope we'll be loading a fix into the update
stream to fix this soon.
We especially wish to thank those of you who attended SqueakFest in
Chicago for testing an earlier version of this update. And now, we
ask all of you to report any errors or oddities you might encounter
with this version, and send your commments, please.
Should you happen to you receive an error message, it would be
*extremely* helpful to us if you'd "store the error log" and attach
it to an email reporting your problem. (This log will be saved in
the "My Squeak" folder on your desktop and time and date stamped for
identification.) Similiarly, if you encounter problems with a
particular project, attaching that "problem project" to an email will
also help us understand your problem greatly. Any email reporting
problems, questions or errors should be sent to
[hidden email].
General comments for discussion should be send to the Squeakland
group mailing address so more people can participate in the
discussion.
We wish you all a great start to the new academic year. Please
remember we are always looking for interesting stories and reports on
what you are doing. We'd love to include your experiences in the
"Squeak News" that appears on the Squeakland website. We'll be
posting more documentation and goodies to Squeakland soon, so please
check back often.
Good luck getting "back to school" and keep on Squeaking!
best regards,
Kim
Locked
