Hi
some news of one of the nicest XO Applications...
Cheers
Markus
Anfang der weitergeleiteten E-Mail:
Von: squeakland website <[email protected]>
Datum: 24. Oktober 2009 20:09:10 MESZ
An: Markus Gaelli <[email protected]>
Betreff: {squeakland} Fall 2009
Fall 2009
Etoys 4 and the new Showcase
Great Hope for the Future
Squeak Etoys 4 Release Notes
Etoys 4 and the new Showcase
by Timothy Falconer
Squeakland is proud to announce the release of Etoys 4, which you
can now download from our website. Special thanks to the Squeakland
software team, particularly Bert Freudenberg, Yoshiki Ohshima, and
Scott Wallace for their tremendous efforts in the last month. Your
hard work really shows!
Below you'll find some thoughts by Scott Wallace, along with the
Etoys 4 release notes which detail the changes you'll find. Of
special interest is the new Squeakland Showcase. Everyone can now
share their projects directly from Etoys to our website, where the
Etoys community can then benefit from the many surprising and useful
Etoys examples that are available. Please explore the showcase and
share your projects with us. We want to hear from you!
Also, if you haven't signed our Squeakers list, consider adding your
name. As I write this, more than 175 people from 35 countries have
signed, which really shows the enthusiasm and reach of Etoys
throughout the world.
Great Hope for the Future
by Scott Wallace
The Etoys 4 release completes the hand-over of Squeak Etoys from
Viewpoints Research to the newly formed Squeakland Foundation.
Under the leadership of Timothy Falconer and Rita Freudenberg,
Squeakland Foundation has now assumed full responsibility for
everything Etoys, including the Squeakland website, the mailing
lists, the bug-tracking system, Squeakfests, documentation,
community development, and now the Etoys software itself.
Throughout the 2009 transition, Viewpointers were involved on an
almost daily basis with the software team. Etoys 4 marks the end of
that formal involvement. Many of us will continue as ordinary,
contributing members of the Squeak Etoys community on a volunteer
basis, but the system and the vision and the future of Etoys are now
entirely in the hands of Squeakland Foundation, and thus, more than
ever, in the hands of the broader community itself.
For those of us who have been involved with Etoys for many years, it
is a poignant moment. Since the beginning, a small core group of us
at Viewpoints Research have always had ultimate responsibility for
Squeak Etoys -- the code, the decisions, the releases. Passing
those powers and responsibilities on will not be entirely painless
for us, but it's a goal of Viewpoints to spin out research
prototypes beyond our lab. It's also the right thing to do, given
the recent increase in Etoys usage due to OLPC.
Several things give me great hope that the future of Etoys is
bright. Foremost is the promise of the new website, particularly
the Showcase, with its "featured" projects vetted by the education
team and with the ability for children and adults to save and share
their projects on the site. The content and evolution of the
Showcase will comprise a centerpiece and gathering place for our
community. We will all benefit and learn from the sharing of
interesting projects. Secondly, people in the community have
started posting code fixes and enhancements to our software tracker,
and the new etoys-dev mailing list has been active. And lastly,
witnessing the commitment and strength of people in the community,
beginning with Tim and Rita, and continuing through our strong teams
of educators, business people, and software writers, and ultimately
with the passion of our hardy, worldwide community of users. All of
these things give me confidence and optimism that Etoys will
continue to thrive and inspire for many years to come.
Squeak Etoys 4 Release Notes
Etoys 4 has three major new changes and many smaller improvements.
Representing a year's worth of work, Etoys 4 is the last release to
include the direct participation Viewpoints Research, as their focus
has always been to create prototypes and spin them out into new
organizations. Viewpoints will now pass the reigns over to the newly
formed Squeakland Foundation, whose mission is to "build community
and encourage deep learning worldwide by promoting, supporting, and
improving Squeak Etoys and related educational media."
Please join us!
Showcase
The biggest change to Etoys and the Squeakland website is our new
project showcase. You may now share projects directly from Etoys to
the Squeakland website. Simply click the Save button, give project
details, and choose "My Squeakland" as the save location. To get a
showcase account, visithttp://squeakland.org/action/signup.
You can then access your project from the Squeakland website or
directly within Etoys itself, using the Load button. This allows you
to use the website as a central place to store your Etoys projects,
whether you wish to make them public or not. When you first upload a
project, it's marked private, which means only you or your friends
may see it. (Friends functionality will be added later this year.)
You can then choose to make your project public by clicking "make
public" on the project page. After being reviewed by other users for
inappropriate content, your project will then become visible to
everyone. Please help us show off the best Etoys projects!
Etoys-To-Go
The next big change is called "Etoys-To-Go", which is a new way to
install and use Etoys. Simply choose Etoys-To-Go from the download
page instead of Windows, Mac, or Linux. You'll then have a portable
Etoys that works on any computer that can be easily copied from
machine to machine, without the added installation step. Even
better, you can run Etoys-To-go directly from a USB flash drive,
which means you can use Etoys on any computer without getting
permission from system administrators. Your project files are saved
back to the USB stick, so you can quickly save and run on your way
to school. Unfortunately, Etoys-To-Go does not include our browser
plugin, so if you want to browse projects on the web, you'll still
need to download and install the usual Windows, Mac, or Linux
version. Project files can be easily exchanged between the Etoys-To-
Go, Mac, Windows, and Linux versions.
License Clean
Etoys 4 is now "license clean", which means it conforms to the
requirements of free and open source systems, such as the various
Linux distributions. In 1996, Apple released Squeak under their own
license. In 2006, Apple relicensed the Squeak core under the Apache
2.0 license, thanks to Steve Jobs, Alan Kay, and the lawyers
involved. Soon after, Viewpoints Research collected written
relicensing agreements from several hundred contributors under the
MIT license, thanks to Kim Rose and the Squeak community volunteers.
Finally, all code in Etoys not explicitly covered by a relicensing
agreement was removed, rewritten, or reverted to an earlier version,
thanks primarily to the efforts of Yoshiki Ohshima. The result of
this hard work is that Squeak Etoys is now completely free and open
source, which means it can be used and modified by anyone in the
world for whatever purpose they imagine.
Improvements
The project-info box fields were updated to match the new Squeakland
showcase.
The load box lets you browse not only local files, but projects in
the Squeakland showcase as well.
The local document directory is automatically pre-selected when
saving a project.
Projects are now created at a 1200x900 pixel resolution by default,
and scaled to the actual Etoys window size. This ensures easier
sharing of projects between computers of different screen resolution.
The former display-mode button in the toolbar now toggles full-
screen mode. To access the scaling options menu, hold down the button.
On the right of the toolbar, there is a new button that governs
toolbar visibility.
To minimize the chance of obscuring essential content when opening
older projects, the toolbar will now appear in its collapsed form,
at the top-right corner of the screen.
New icons were chosen for Quit, Load, and Save buttons. Under Sugar,
the Stop, Import, and Keep icons are used instead.
The "undo" button was removed to make room in the toolbar, as it did
not work reliably anyway.
We renamed the startup screen to "Home".
The home screen is now always accessible via project navigation
buttons.
We now show the full set of choices in the authoring-tools menu to
all users whether eToyFriendly is turned on or not.
A book's navigation bar is now protected from being ripped out
accidentally.
Objects can now be copied into and out of Etoys using the system
clipboard. When the halo is visible, press Ctrl-C to copy (Cmd-C on
Mac).
The world now receives all keystrokes for better scripting of
keyboard-controlled projects.
The less widely-used items of the "geometry" category have been
moved out to a new category called "more geometry".
Opening a new category pane now closes other categories if there
isn't enough vertical space on the screen.
The "bearing to" and "distance to" tiles now respect an object's
reference position (center of rotation).
The grab-patch tool can now be dragged in any direction, not just
top-left to bottom-right.
Lasso and grab-patch tools were moved back to Supplies flap.
Wording improvements were made in several menus and help balloons.
On Linux, sound compatibility has been improved.
The separate .gif file is no longer generated.
Saving a project now includes a "thumbnail.png" inside the project.
You can use a zip tool to extract the thumbnail if needed.
The Mac Finder now shows a thumbnail for new project files.
Translations and Quick Quides now work in the web browser plugin.
Etoys now ships the ScratchPlugin (although we only use the "open
URL in web browser" primitive so far). Thanks to Mitchel Resnick and
John Maloney and the other Lifelong Kindergardeners.
Known Bugs
Uploading a project from Etoys to Squeakland does not work if you
are behind a proxy. Please use a web browser to upload projects in
this case.
On Snow Leopard, the web browser plugin works unreliable in Safari.
We recommend using Firefox until we fix this problem.
If you encounter issues in the plugin, try clicking the full-screen
button in the toolbar. This can fix animation sluggishness,
repainting problems, and wrong key/button mappings.
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