http://try.squeak.org/ is great but...

For a project I am involved in I am looking at alternatives for running
applications in the web browser to avoid having to install stuff on a
user's machine. So I took a look at  http://try.squeak.org/ and think it
is a fabulous resouce for our community. Unfortunately, I would not
point out this page to people I want to get interested in Squeak. The
reason for that is that they are likely to get frustrated by the
differences in the Squeak 2.2 GUI in relation to "normal" OSes.

The solution to this problem could be as simple as adding a paragraph
between "Above you see..." and "Other Squeak image" explaining how to do
stuff in Squeak 2.2 when you have one, two or three buttons on your
mouse. It is important to explain how to get a world menu and how to "do
it" and "print it". A child might play around until they find out these
things on their own but most adults will give up after just a few
seconds of things not working as they are used to.

An alternative would be a video explaining the same thing and embeded
right below the live SqueakJS.

I would not put a link to a nice tutorial in another page because we
want people to stay on the "try" page.

-- Jecel

Hi, there.

I think that there should be a shortcut like "http://try.squeak.org/5.1" to run Squeak 5.1 with SqueakJS.

Best,
Marcel

Marcel.,

> I think that there should be a shortcut like "http://try.squeak.org/5.1" to
> run Squeak 5.1 with SqueakJS.

The GUI would be far more familiar to new users than the Squeak 2.2 one.
The problem is that on most computers this will be so slow that if might
cause a negative impression. I suppose that is why 2.2 was selected as
the first impression (there are links to more modern versions in that
page).

-- Jecel

> On 22-02-2017, at 2:09 AM, marcel.taeumel <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Hi, there.
>
> I think that there should be a shortcut like "http://try.squeak.org/5.1" to
> run Squeak 5.1 with SqueakJS.

A good idea for specific versions but surely the default needs to be the latest system?

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
"Virtual Memory" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from.

Well that’s easy enough to fix.
a) improve the performance of the ui for everyone by improving the morphic classes etc
b) beat Bert until he makes squeakjs faster


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: MW: Multiply Work

How about the latest Squeak image with an MVC project opened in it? That
seems usable on SqueakJS.

Levente

P.S.: I just enabled CORS on files.squeak.org, so the links on
try.squeak.org should work on modern browsers.

On Wed, 22 Feb 2017, Nicolas Cellier wrote:

> I think that there should be a shortcut like "http://try.squeak.org/5.1" to
> run Squeak 5.1 with SqueakJS.

Yes!

> On 23-02-2017, at 10:59 AM, Bert Freudenberg <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Even if it is this slow?
> http://try.squeak.org/#zip=[http://files.squeak.org/5.1/Squeak5.1-16549-32bit/Squeak5.1-16549-32bit.zip,http://files.squeak.org/5.0/SqueakV50.sources.zip]

It’s slow, but pretty much what we used to get on RISC OS back in the 3.x era anyway. Which I hope explains why I used to spend a lot of time complaining about Morphic…


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: YVR: Branch to Vancouver

> Even if it is this slow?

Well, without knowing what all your/our explicit goals for
try.squeak.org are, I think my default answer is still "yes".  Its
definitely slower, but as Jecel alluded, the faster 2.2 presents a
different compromise of usability for its speed.

As neither is meant to allow the user to do anything practical,
usability might not matter much.  That leaves 5.1 the advantage of at
least showing them what Squeak looks like today, and poke around the
IDE.  A clear message about what it is, why its slow, and what the
future plans are and where to get the fast native version would be
much more interesting and attractive to new visitors.

At a minimum, I hope you will consider clarifying the text on the
page to be more upfront and clear that this is a **very old version** of
Squeak, and explain why not seeing the latest.  Currently, it isn't until the
third paragraph that it says "2.2" and "1998" but even that does not
inform unfamiliar users that this isn't the latest and greatest
version of Squeak.  IMO, the, "more demanding" hint in the last
sentence is too subtle, most won't get the meaning even if they
skimmed that far.

Best,
  Chris

PS -- for the 5.1 idea, what if, instead of a black box and orange
progress bar (when loading the image), if it could display a static
picture of the modern 5.1 desktop in its initial state with a much
more subtle "loading" message overlaid... that way, new visitors read
the text on the page, the appearance of slowness might be diminished..