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Squeak Times UI (1.1) For Review
We are Squeak Times:
Click here to see reviews for previous UI version(s)
Some developments currently being considered and/or implemented:
- Combining the "front desk" and the "choose news sources" windows into one window. We've found that whenever someone wants to choose news sources, the chooser popup window is usually moved so that subsequent paper generation can be selected while the chooser is visible. Combining both into one window eliminates this "window moving" hassle. Combining windows also helps with the current user confusion about why the entire software doesn't quit when 'Quit' is selected (only the window associated with the clicked-on 'Quit' button disappears).
- Updating the color scheme for ALL window elements to be uniform.
- Updating the generic button placement scheme (quit, for example) for all windows to be uniform.
- Refining our mechanism for indicating news gathering progress during newspaper generation. Currently, a source button "lights up" white while being accessed for articles during newspaper generation. We'd like to combine this with some further real-time progress indication (like a progress bar or something) in addition to changing the cursor pointer to an hourglass or something.
- Implementing "balloon help" for ALL buttons. Updating the help screen to reflect changes in the UI.
- Reorganizing our "expanded entertainment" category. Expanded makes no sense if someone hasn't selected a "basic" entertainment source.
Some "mothballed" ideas:
- "Pin and groove" style category and source sequencing (clicking and dragging on an item to change its location within a collection...somewhat like a scrollbar button). Since Squeak doesn't appear to support this type of interface currently, we found that the effort necessary to implement this functionality was taking too much time away from completing core project requirements. Our software currently conforms to the requirement of allowing the users to choose a primary news category, but we don't let the user otherwise rearrange category (or news source within category!) sequencing.
- Multi"threading" the news source accesses. Under simple tests, we've found that the Transcript does not appear to be multi-process compliant. Weird hangs and displays occur when two completely different processes write to the Transcript. Are we wrong in our understanding of how the Transcript handles multiple simultaneous requests? Of course, we could eliminate all message sends to the Transcript (including those annoying "data was slow/late" messages), but even this simple problem highlights the difficulty of implementing multiprocessing in Squeak with our current understanding.
What things about our software should be changed as soon as possible?
What should we make sure to keep the same in future versions of our software?
Please post feedback here
I apologize for the "add to page" blocks not working on earlier versions of this page. The server didn't like multiple "add to page" blocks, and was rejecting any feedback. If you try now, it should work :) Matthew Wolenetz
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