Interesting Pharo Launcher feedback
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 didnât 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
On 26 June 2018 at 06:17, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works> 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 didnât 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
Hi Tim,
Le 26 juin 2018 à 03:00, Ben Coman <btc@openinworld.com> a écrit :
On 26 June 2018 at 06:17, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works <mailto:tim@testit.works>> 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 didnât 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
As I mentioned - the user in question was quite complimentary, just confused on first launch. Equally we donât 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 youâve 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 itâs 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: âTemplatesâ -> âImage Templatesâ or maybe even âProject Templatesâ âImagesâ -> âDownloaded Imagesâ or maybe âCreated Projectsâ (While we are familiar with the term image, maybe itâs an implementation detail - eclipse and IntelliJ create projects, and we arenât 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 shouldnât need to dumb It down too much. Iâm 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 <christophe.demarey@inria.fr> wrote:
Hi Tim,
Le 26 juin 2018 à 03:00, Ben Coman <btc@openinworld.com> a écrit :
On 26 June 2018 at 06:17, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works> 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 didnât 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
Just as a small visualisation of below - I hacked the titles just to see (and maybe the project metaphor isnât a bad one?)
On 26 Jun 2018, at 09:13, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works> wrote:
As I mentioned - the user in question was quite complimentary, just confused on first launch.
Equally we donât 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 youâve 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 itâs 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:
âTemplatesâ -> âImage Templatesâ or maybe even âProject Templatesâ
âImagesâ -> âDownloaded Imagesâ or maybe âCreated Projectsâ
(While we are familiar with the term image, maybe itâs an implementation detail - eclipse and IntelliJ create projects, and we arenât 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 shouldnât need to dumb It down too much.
Iâm 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 <christophe.demarey@inria.fr <mailto:christophe.demarey@inria.fr>> wrote:
Hi Tim,
Le 26 juin 2018 à 03:00, Ben Coman <btc@openinworld.com <mailto:btc@openinworld.com>> a écrit :
On 26 June 2018 at 06:17, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works <mailto:tim@testit.works>> 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 didnât 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
Tim Mackinnon wrote
maybe the project metaphor isnât 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
On 6/26/18, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works> wrote:
As I mentioned - the user in question was quite complimentary, just confused on first launch.
Equally we donât 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 youâve 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 itâs 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:
âTemplatesâ -> âImage Templatesâ or maybe even âProject Templatesâ
âImagesâ -> âDownloaded Imagesâ or maybe âCreated Projectsâ
(While we are familiar with the term image, maybe itâs an implementation detail - eclipse and IntelliJ create projects, and we arenât 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 shouldnât need to dumb It down too much.
Iâm 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 <christophe.demarey@inria.fr> wrote:
Hi Tim,
Le 26 juin 2018 à 03:00, Ben Coman <btc@openinworld.com> a écrit :
On 26 June 2018 at 06:17, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works> 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 didnât 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
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 ânew projectâ and typically identify it as a a web project, or Java spring project (so effectively Templates). We kind of do that too donât we? A moose project or a seaside project (although we seem to load more stuff from scratch these days - but potentially maybe weâre 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 weâre 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 Benâs 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? Iâm not actually clear on what our terminology is. In writing this, itâs usefully got me thinking that when I create a Launcher image (project?), rather than name it after the template, as in âPharo 6.1 (stable)â, this should really be meta data on a directory and image called âPagerDutyâ. 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 <hannes.hirzel@gmail.com> wrote:
On 6/26/18, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works> wrote: As I mentioned - the user in question was quite complimentary, just confused on first launch.
Equally we donât 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 youâve 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 itâs 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:
âTemplatesâ -> âImage Templatesâ or maybe even âProject Templatesâ
âImagesâ -> âDownloaded Imagesâ or maybe âCreated Projectsâ
(While we are familiar with the term image, maybe itâs an implementation detail - eclipse and IntelliJ create projects, and we arenât 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 shouldnât need to dumb It down too much.
Iâm 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 <christophe.demarey@inria.fr> wrote:
Hi Tim,
Le 26 juin 2018 à 03:00, Ben Coman <btc@openinworld.com> a écrit :
On 26 June 2018 at 06:17, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works> 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 didnât 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
On mar. 26 juin 2018 at 00:18, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works> 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 didnât 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
participants (6)
-
Ben Coman -
Christophe Demarey -
Cyril Ferlicot -
H. Hirzel -
Sean P. DeNigris -
Tim Mackinnon