Thanks a lot for your feedback. Stef
On Nov 17, 2009, at 8:49 AM, Michael van der Gulik wrote: > Hi. > > Here's some feedback for Pharo. I've been using Squeak 3.10, but because I > want to use the NewCompiler, I'm going to move development of SecureSqueak to > Pharo. > > I go to http://pharo.org/. Woops. He he. I find my way to the Pharo home page. > > Getting Pharo up and running could be a lot easier; I'm using Ubuntu Linux, > and I got it up and running quickly because I've a fairly experienced Squeak > developer. If I was less familiar with image files and VMs, I would be lost > and probably give up. > > I recommend making the release for each platform one large .zip file > containing the images, sources and VM. This will reduce confusion, and if you > put the executable in the root directory of the zip file, most people will > easily be able to work it out. > > The VM has a README file - good, but it assumes a lot of experience from the > user. Again, if I was not a programmer, I'd be lost. > > The image zip file has a lot of extra stuff in it (fonts?) and no README file. > > I start up the VM - I get a white window, the Pharo logo and that's it. I'm > able to just jump in and start using this because I'm familiar with Squeak, > but if I was a new user to Pharo, this would be rather intimidating. I > recommend having a workspace with nicely formatted fonts saying "Welcome to > Pharo, go read Pharo by Example". > > The project menu / desktop menu / whatever menu that comes up is badly > formatted. The last four items ("Save", "Save As", "Save and quit" and > "Quit") have icons and more spacing between them than the items above them. > The vertical size of each menu item should be constant. Menu entries still > use the small font that Squeak uses, making them hard to click on (for > fumble-fingers like me). > > The menu structure is a vast improvement over Squeak! > > I open up a browser. It looks nice, but I can't understand the > red/yellow/green buttons in the top left corner. What are they meant to be? > The tooltips help, but I find it odd to use coloured buttons. > > I use a slowish Celeron-based computer (if you could call 1.6 BILLION > operations per second slow!). The whole environment feels a bit sluggish. I > spend some time in the preferences and manage to make it a bit more reactive > by disabling some eye-candy. > > I come across a dialog: "Changes have not been saved, bla bla". The dialog is > odd; it needs the attention of a graphic designer. It has a text entry box in > it for no reason? > > I make a class and begin typing in its comment; I get continuous annoying > drop-down lists which aren't relevant for documentation. The text is badly > lagged; I count 5 seconds before what I type appears on the screen. > > I get a dialog asking me for my full name (nice! Much better than initials). > The text in the dialog is badly aligned and not word-wrapped correctly. Text > should be left-aligned or fully justified, unless it's Right-to-Left text. > Also, use real right-arrows! Pharo supports Unicode! The dialog did not > appear until after I had already made three classes - surely it should ask > for my name as soon as I start making any source changes to the system? > > I type in some code. The auto-drop-down thing keeps guessing what I'm typing, > even when I'm typing comments. It is starting to annoy me. Some more time > disabling preferences seems to fix this. > > I think that's enough for now. The new user experience needs to be worked on, > in particular by making the downloading and setting up more intuitive, and by > having a welcome message when the image is started. > > Perhaps the auto-completion stuff works better on faster computers. The > environment is a lot better after disabling it. > > Gulik. > > > > > > > > -- > http://gulik.pbwiki.com/ > _______________________________________________ > Pharo-project mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project
