Interesting Pharo Launcher feedback

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Interesting Pharo Launcher feedback

Tim Mackinnon
Hi everyone - at tonights month UK Smalltalk Meetup, we got some nice compliments on the state of Pharo (the participants - all ex small talkers - although ex in so much as they fondly remembered it and wanted to use it for something relevant now because they enjoyed it in the past).

Anyway, one interesting comment stuck out - he had downloaded Pharo (having used Visual Age 15+ years ago) and was a bit overwhelmed with what laugher presented to him. He didn’t hate it - but was initially a bit lost as to what it all meant and how to start… he figured it out, but I thought the feedback was interesting and made me think that maybe we need some form of intro wizard to get people off to a quick start but leave them confident enough that they might come back and try a Pharo 7 or Moose etc.

I encouraged him to post something on here, but thoughtI would note it (as it seems quite easy to fix) as an idea while it was fresh in my mind.

Tim
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Re: Interesting Pharo Launcher feedback

Ben Coman
On 26 June 2018 at 06:17, Tim Mackinnon <[hidden email]> wrote:
Hi everyone - at tonights month UK Smalltalk Meetup, we got some nice compliments on the state of Pharo (the participants - all ex small talkers - although ex in so much as they fondly remembered it and wanted to use it for something relevant now because they enjoyed it in the past).

Anyway, one interesting comment stuck out - he had downloaded Pharo (having used Visual Age 15+ years ago) and was a bit overwhelmed with what laugher presented to him. He didn’t hate it - but was initially a bit lost as to what it all meant and how to start… he figured it out, but I thought the feedback was interesting and made me think that maybe we need some form of intro wizard to get people off to a quick start but leave them confident enough that they might come back and try a Pharo 7 or Moose etc.

I encouraged him to post something on here, but thoughtI would note it (as it seems quite easy to fix) as an idea while it was fresh in my mind.


A welcome tutorial is a good idea.  And btw, the sort of idea that only comes from broader use of PharoLauncher.

cheers -ben

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Re: Interesting Pharo Launcher feedback

CyrilFerlicot
In reply to this post by Tim Mackinnon


On mar. 26 juin 2018 at 00:18, Tim Mackinnon <[hidden email]> wrote:
Hi everyone - at tonights month UK Smalltalk Meetup, we got some nice compliments on the state of Pharo (the participants - all ex small talkers - although ex in so much as they fondly remembered it and wanted to use it for something relevant now because they enjoyed it in the past).

Anyway, one interesting comment stuck out - he had downloaded Pharo (having used Visual Age 15+ years ago) and was a bit overwhelmed with what laugher presented to him. He didn’t hate it - but was initially a bit lost as to what it all meant and how to start… he figured it out, but I thought the feedback was interesting and made me think that maybe we need some form of intro wizard to get people off to a quick start but leave them confident enough that they might come back and try a Pharo 7 or Moose etc.

I encouraged him to post something on here, but thoughtI would note it (as it seems quite easy to fix) as an idea while it was fresh in my mind.

Tim
Hi,

It is disabled in development I think but with a released version there is a Welcome window. Maybe it should be where we add more tutorials. 
--
Cyril Ferlicot
https://ferlicot.fr
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Re: Interesting Pharo Launcher feedback

demarey
In reply to this post by Ben Coman
Hi Tim,

Le 26 juin 2018 à 03:00, Ben Coman <[hidden email]> a écrit :

On 26 June 2018 at 06:17, Tim Mackinnon <[hidden email]> wrote:
Hi everyone - at tonights month UK Smalltalk Meetup, we got some nice compliments on the state of Pharo (the participants - all ex small talkers - although ex in so much as they fondly remembered it and wanted to use it for something relevant now because they enjoyed it in the past).

Anyway, one interesting comment stuck out - he had downloaded Pharo (having used Visual Age 15+ years ago) and was a bit overwhelmed with what laugher presented to him. He didn’t hate it - but was initially a bit lost as to what it all meant and how to start… he figured it out, but I thought the feedback was interesting and made me think that maybe we need some form of intro wizard to get people off to a quick start but leave them confident enough that they might come back and try a Pharo 7 or Moose etc.

I encouraged him to post something on here, but thoughtI would note it (as it seems quite easy to fix) as an idea while it was fresh in my mind.


A welcome tutorial is a good idea.  And btw, the sort of idea that only comes from broader use of PharoLauncher.

Thanks for the feedback.
We also got this feedback from students. We know we have to improve the UI by simplifying it.
Our idea was to only provide a window with a toolbar and the list of images as the main Pharo Launhcer window.
On this windows, clicking on the + button will open a « wizard » like the one for creating repositories in Iceberg. There you could choose to create an image from « featured images » or ci, etc.

It would lower a lot the cognitive charge of the current window.
We just need time to implement it.

Cheers,
Christophe


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Re: Interesting Pharo Launcher feedback

Tim Mackinnon
As I mentioned - the user in question was quite complimentary, just confused on first launch.

Equally we don’t want to impact power users, and ultimately we want to encourage everyone to try newer images to help with improvements. 

I honestly think that some slightly improved terminology and a bit of guidance to get your first image (eg picking the correct one) is all it takes.

Once you’ve groked it - you are off. We just want that first experience to be pleasant.

I personally like to see the list of images and understand how many builds have been made as it’s comforting to see the progress and be encouraged to join in.

I as going to propose a simple change to the name on the lists like:

“Templates” -> “Image Templates” or maybe even “Project Templates”

“Images” -> “Downloaded Images” or maybe “Created Projects”

(While we are familiar with the term image, maybe it’s an implementation detail - eclipse and IntelliJ create projects, and we aren’t so different)

We could also as Cyril suggests, have a little welcome window with some text and a picture.

Both really simple to do and probably enough to get people started. After all, our audience is reasonable technical so we shouldn’t need to dumb It down too much.

I’m also conscious about here is a lot of Pharo 7 work to do as well.

Tim

Sent from my iPhone

On 26 Jun 2018, at 08:09, Christophe Demarey <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Tim,

Le 26 juin 2018 à 03:00, Ben Coman <[hidden email]> a écrit :

On 26 June 2018 at 06:17, Tim Mackinnon <[hidden email]> wrote:
Hi everyone - at tonights month UK Smalltalk Meetup, we got some nice compliments on the state of Pharo (the participants - all ex small talkers - although ex in so much as they fondly remembered it and wanted to use it for something relevant now because they enjoyed it in the past).

Anyway, one interesting comment stuck out - he had downloaded Pharo (having used Visual Age 15+ years ago) and was a bit overwhelmed with what laugher presented to him. He didn’t hate it - but was initially a bit lost as to what it all meant and how to start… he figured it out, but I thought the feedback was interesting and made me think that maybe we need some form of intro wizard to get people off to a quick start but leave them confident enough that they might come back and try a Pharo 7 or Moose etc.

I encouraged him to post something on here, but thoughtI would note it (as it seems quite easy to fix) as an idea while it was fresh in my mind.


A welcome tutorial is a good idea.  And btw, the sort of idea that only comes from broader use of PharoLauncher.

Thanks for the feedback.
We also got this feedback from students. We know we have to improve the UI by simplifying it.
Our idea was to only provide a window with a toolbar and the list of images as the main Pharo Launhcer window.
On this windows, clicking on the + button will open a « wizard » like the one for creating repositories in Iceberg. There you could choose to create an image from « featured images » or ci, etc.

It would lower a lot the cognitive charge of the current window.
We just need time to implement it.

Cheers,
Christophe


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Re: Interesting Pharo Launcher feedback

Tim Mackinnon
Just as a small visualisation of below - I hacked the titles just to see (and maybe the project metaphor isn’t a bad one?)



On 26 Jun 2018, at 09:13, Tim Mackinnon <[hidden email]> wrote:

As I mentioned - the user in question was quite complimentary, just confused on first launch.

Equally we don’t want to impact power users, and ultimately we want to encourage everyone to try newer images to help with improvements. 

I honestly think that some slightly improved terminology and a bit of guidance to get your first image (eg picking the correct one) is all it takes.

Once you’ve groked it - you are off. We just want that first experience to be pleasant.

I personally like to see the list of images and understand how many builds have been made as it’s comforting to see the progress and be encouraged to join in.

I as going to propose a simple change to the name on the lists like:

“Templates” -> “Image Templates” or maybe even “Project Templates”

“Images” -> “Downloaded Images” or maybe “Created Projects”

(While we are familiar with the term image, maybe it’s an implementation detail - eclipse and IntelliJ create projects, and we aren’t so different)

We could also as Cyril suggests, have a little welcome window with some text and a picture.

Both really simple to do and probably enough to get people started. After all, our audience is reasonable technical so we shouldn’t need to dumb It down too much.

I’m also conscious about here is a lot of Pharo 7 work to do as well.

Tim

Sent from my iPhone

On 26 Jun 2018, at 08:09, Christophe Demarey <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Tim,

Le 26 juin 2018 à 03:00, Ben Coman <[hidden email]> a écrit :

On 26 June 2018 at 06:17, Tim Mackinnon <[hidden email]> wrote:
Hi everyone - at tonights month UK Smalltalk Meetup, we got some nice compliments on the state of Pharo (the participants - all ex small talkers - although ex in so much as they fondly remembered it and wanted to use it for something relevant now because they enjoyed it in the past).

Anyway, one interesting comment stuck out - he had downloaded Pharo (having used Visual Age 15+ years ago) and was a bit overwhelmed with what laugher presented to him. He didn’t hate it - but was initially a bit lost as to what it all meant and how to start… he figured it out, but I thought the feedback was interesting and made me think that maybe we need some form of intro wizard to get people off to a quick start but leave them confident enough that they might come back and try a Pharo 7 or Moose etc.

I encouraged him to post something on here, but thoughtI would note it (as it seems quite easy to fix) as an idea while it was fresh in my mind.


A welcome tutorial is a good idea.  And btw, the sort of idea that only comes from broader use of PharoLauncher.

Thanks for the feedback.
We also got this feedback from students. We know we have to improve the UI by simplifying it.
Our idea was to only provide a window with a toolbar and the list of images as the main Pharo Launhcer window.
On this windows, clicking on the + button will open a « wizard » like the one for creating repositories in Iceberg. There you could choose to create an image from « featured images » or ci, etc.

It would lower a lot the cognitive charge of the current window.
We just need time to implement it.

Cheers,
Christophe



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Re: Interesting Pharo Launcher feedback

Sean P. DeNigris
Administrator
Tim Mackinnon wrote
> maybe the project metaphor isn’t a bad one?

Let's sync with Denis because Calypso already has a stub for "Projects" and
we don't want to overload this term adding to the confusion!



-----
Cheers,
Sean
--
Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html

Cheers,
Sean
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Re: Interesting Pharo Launcher feedback

Hannes Hirzel
In reply to this post by Tim Mackinnon
On 6/26/18, Tim Mackinnon <[hidden email]> wrote:
> As I mentioned - the user in question was quite complimentary, just confused
> on first launch.
>
> Equally we don’t want to impact power users, and ultimately we want to
> encourage everyone to try newer images to help with improvements.
>
> I honestly think that some slightly improved terminology and a bit of
> guidance to get your first image (eg picking the correct one) is all it
> takes.

+1
Maybe just a note on the download website which 'new project' (image)
beginners should go for....

--Hannes

>
> Once you’ve groked it - you are off. We just want that first experience to
> be pleasant.
>
> I personally like to see the list of images and understand how many builds
> have been made as it’s comforting to see the progress and be encouraged to
> join in.
>
> I as going to propose a simple change to the name on the lists like:
>
> “Templates” -> “Image Templates” or maybe even “Project Templates”
>
> “Images” -> “Downloaded Images” or maybe “Created Projects”
>
> (While we are familiar with the term image, maybe it’s an implementation
> detail - eclipse and IntelliJ create projects, and we aren’t so different)
>
> We could also as Cyril suggests, have a little welcome window with some text
> and a picture.
>
> Both really simple to do and probably enough to get people started. After
> all, our audience is reasonable technical so we shouldn’t need to dumb It
> down too much.
>
> I’m also conscious about here is a lot of Pharo 7 work to do as well.
>
> Tim
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On 26 Jun 2018, at 08:09, Christophe Demarey <[hidden email]>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Tim,
>>
>>> Le 26 juin 2018 à 03:00, Ben Coman <[hidden email]> a écrit :
>>>
>>> On 26 June 2018 at 06:17, Tim Mackinnon <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>>> Hi everyone - at tonights month UK Smalltalk Meetup, we got some nice
>>>> compliments on the state of Pharo (the participants - all ex small
>>>> talkers - although ex in so much as they fondly remembered it and wanted
>>>> to use it for something relevant now because they enjoyed it in the
>>>> past).
>>>>
>>>> Anyway, one interesting comment stuck out - he had downloaded Pharo
>>>> (having used Visual Age 15+ years ago) and was a bit overwhelmed with
>>>> what laugher presented to him. He didn’t hate it - but was initially a
>>>> bit lost as to what it all meant and how to start… he figured it out,
>>>> but I thought the feedback was interesting and made me think that maybe
>>>> we need some form of intro wizard to get people off to a quick start but
>>>> leave them confident enough that they might come back and try a Pharo 7
>>>> or Moose etc.
>>>>
>>>> I encouraged him to post something on here, but thoughtI would note it
>>>> (as it seems quite easy to fix) as an idea while it was fresh in my
>>>> mind.
>>>>
>>>
>>> A welcome tutorial is a good idea.  And btw, the sort of idea that only
>>> comes from broader use of PharoLauncher.
>>
>> Thanks for the feedback.
>> We also got this feedback from students. We know we have to improve the UI
>> by simplifying it.
>> Our idea was to only provide a window with a toolbar and the list of
>> images as the main Pharo Launhcer window.
>> On this windows, clicking on the + button will open a « wizard » like the
>> one for creating repositories in Iceberg. There you could choose to create
>> an image from « featured images » or ci, etc.
>>
>> It would lower a lot the cognitive charge of the current window.
>> We just need time to implement it.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Christophe
>>
>>
>

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Re: Interesting Pharo Launcher feedback

Tim Mackinnon
Good point on the potential projects collision (aside: that does nothing in Calypso at the moment right?).

I was thinking that in Eclipse or IntelliJ, when you launch the IDE and go to do something, you create a “new project” and typically identify it as a a web project, or Java spring project (so effectively Templates).

We kind of do that too don’t we? A moose project or a seaside project (although we seem to load more stuff from scratch these days - but potentially maybe we’re missing a trick of not helping someone create a fresh baselineOf to point to some pre-loaded assets in a template image?).

I know we often think more about a blank canvas and then explore and pull stuff in as we find it - but if we’re trying to build a bridge for newcomers (particularly students who use other similarish tools) then this terminology is what they would expect.

Going back to Ben’s point - what then is the project in Calypso.

Is my project - eg. PagerDutyWeb is the main project in my image, and it depends on sub projects like Seaside,Willow and NeoJson - or are those latter items libraries?

I’m not actually clear on what our terminology is.

In writing this, it’s usefully got me thinking that when I create a Launcher image (project?), rather than name it after the template, as in “Pharo 6.1 (stable)”, this should really be meta data on a directory and image called “PagerDuty”.

We have a crude form of that in a file called description.txt, but maybe that should be called image.json and have fields for description, template, build, createdDate etc.

Of course this is a bit more work - but as you build up a list of images, it would be handier to manage them better.

Tim

Sent from my iPhone

>> On 26 Jun 2018, at 14:37, H. Hirzel <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>> On 6/26/18, Tim Mackinnon <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> As I mentioned - the user in question was quite complimentary, just confused
>> on first launch.
>>
>> Equally we don’t want to impact power users, and ultimately we want to
>> encourage everyone to try newer images to help with improvements.
>>
>> I honestly think that some slightly improved terminology and a bit of
>> guidance to get your first image (eg picking the correct one) is all it
>> takes.
>
> +1
> Maybe just a note on the download website which 'new project' (image)
> beginners should go for....
>
> --Hannes
>>
>> Once you’ve groked it - you are off. We just want that first experience to
>> be pleasant.
>>
>> I personally like to see the list of images and understand how many builds
>> have been made as it’s comforting to see the progress and be encouraged to
>> join in.
>>
>> I as going to propose a simple change to the name on the lists like:
>>
>> “Templates” -> “Image Templates” or maybe even “Project Templates”
>>
>> “Images” -> “Downloaded Images” or maybe “Created Projects”
>>
>> (While we are familiar with the term image, maybe it’s an implementation
>> detail - eclipse and IntelliJ create projects, and we aren’t so different)
>>
>> We could also as Cyril suggests, have a little welcome window with some text
>> and a picture.
>>
>> Both really simple to do and probably enough to get people started. After
>> all, our audience is reasonable technical so we shouldn’t need to dumb It
>> down too much.
>>
>> I’m also conscious about here is a lot of Pharo 7 work to do as well.
>>
>> Tim
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>>> On 26 Jun 2018, at 08:09, Christophe Demarey <[hidden email]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Tim,
>>>
>>>> Le 26 juin 2018 à 03:00, Ben Coman <[hidden email]> a écrit :
>>>>
>>>> On 26 June 2018 at 06:17, Tim Mackinnon <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>>>> Hi everyone - at tonights month UK Smalltalk Meetup, we got some nice
>>>>> compliments on the state of Pharo (the participants - all ex small
>>>>> talkers - although ex in so much as they fondly remembered it and wanted
>>>>> to use it for something relevant now because they enjoyed it in the
>>>>> past).
>>>>>
>>>>> Anyway, one interesting comment stuck out - he had downloaded Pharo
>>>>> (having used Visual Age 15+ years ago) and was a bit overwhelmed with
>>>>> what laugher presented to him. He didn’t hate it - but was initially a
>>>>> bit lost as to what it all meant and how to start… he figured it out,
>>>>> but I thought the feedback was interesting and made me think that maybe
>>>>> we need some form of intro wizard to get people off to a quick start but
>>>>> leave them confident enough that they might come back and try a Pharo 7
>>>>> or Moose etc.
>>>>>
>>>>> I encouraged him to post something on here, but thoughtI would note it
>>>>> (as it seems quite easy to fix) as an idea while it was fresh in my
>>>>> mind.
>>>>
>>>> A welcome tutorial is a good idea.  And btw, the sort of idea that only
>>>> comes from broader use of PharoLauncher.
>>>
>>> Thanks for the feedback.
>>> We also got this feedback from students. We know we have to improve the UI
>>> by simplifying it.
>>> Our idea was to only provide a window with a toolbar and the list of
>>> images as the main Pharo Launhcer window.
>>> On this windows, clicking on the + button will open a « wizard » like the
>>> one for creating repositories in Iceberg. There you could choose to create
>>> an image from « featured images » or ci, etc.
>>>
>>> It would lower a lot the cognitive charge of the current window.
>>> We just need time to implement it.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Christophe
>