Ian Trudel pravi:
Göran Krampe:
Not sure what you mean there.
Squeak is hardly approachable to newcomers (either seasoned programmers or simple new ones). Gaining popularity explicitly means to have newcomers. It's not possible if they can't understand what's going on.
Personally I like the colors. I also don't equal "normal" with "professional". But such is taste!
We could certainly debate on tastes but it's perfectly fine that you like the current colour scheme. However, you're not alone using Squeak and we have to consider other tastes.
I just mean something approachable (normal look-and-feel), where people will feel comfortable from the day they start using Squeak through every other following days.
A professional look-and-feel is probably more about simplicity and usability. It doesn't need to have colours by truck load. Something that one can spend countless hours looking at without eyes popping out of their sockets. And it's about everything... for example, Squeak has these childish window buttons and so on... it's NOT that cool, far from being trendy. Why would we get stubborn to keep such things? It looks like a toy, Squeak sometimes feels like a toy. When I squeeze Squeak, it squeaks. Just saying... =)
I completely agree with Ian here. If Squeak wants to be considered for serious development, but also to attract developers from other communities and newcomers, it must have the look&feel which is close to theirs. This not mean that it must be the same, no, just that it follows the established look&feel standards elsewhere. Current Squeak is far away from that, while Pharo is marching well into a more standard look&feel direction. This is actually one of main reasons I'm attracted to Pharo. Also because they listen to such proposals! But this don't mean that EToys can stay more colorful, no, let it be on top of that more "traditionally professional" base. Why to mix two so different audiences into one image? Janko
And, unless some of us are graphic designers, why not just focus on something simple, usable and approachable? That's definitively not out of reach.
Note that talking about what we "need" and what other people "want" is not really that fruitful. We get what we *do*, or in other words - if someone feels it is important enough to spend time on it - it will get done. Noone works on something because *someone else* told him to.
It seems to me that we are crying for direction as a community. Squeak seems to be lost. Consequently, need, want, do, etc... it's just not happening. Don't get me wrong, but it's just that you make it sounds like everything can be done without a plan. And some of the things we could want requires a lot of work hours and man power. It's not going to happen overnight.
requirements of my distributors, which makes it overly challenging for me to consider Squeak as our platform of development. Elaborate?
Please, Igor and I have talked a little bit about this. He will certainly bring that on board's table. Anyway, Göran, I hope to be able to share a complete list at later time. I am not done reviewing the requirements. It's also challenging to know the status of projects in Squeak and what has to be done.
Squeak doesn't need a killer app. It needs to be spruced up and put back on track. Honey moon is over, it's time to get real. Hehe, I really don't agree. :)
Squeak *is* real. We already have our killer app (Seaside). We do need to clean shit up though (and I am not talking about UI primarily) and get the improvement process working. Currently Squeak.org is getting smashed (again, I don't have hard numbers, but I think I am right) by Pharo when it comes to hard, concrete, nitty gritt work getting done.
Squeak has a killer app named Seaside. Ruby has a killer app named Ruby On Rails. Both are web frameworks, which kills which?
It doesn't really matter. It's not even about merits. Ruby is still more approachable language and better documented. And I find it almost amusing to have a killer app for the web, when one of the strength of Squeak is multimedia. No, no, I am not trying to flame war here... just trying to expose few things in order that we can openly discuss about them.
Whether you agree or not, Squeak doesn't seem to gain in popularity and people are flocking out to other forks. That means Squeak is doing something wrong. Wrong enough to overcome all the "done right". =)
Regards, Ian
-- Janko Mivšek AIDA/Web Smalltalk Web Application Server http://www.aidaweb.si