On Thu, Jan 15, 2004 at 01:50:12PM +0100, jeremie zimmermann wrote: > i think that using a "real" color-picker may help kids to get used to standard > drawing tools, familiarizing them and maybe giving them at some point the > curiosity of using complex drawing tools?
The idea of getting my 5-year-old "used to" the "standard" ways of doing things on the computer is not very appealing. For example, I could throw a "real" file browser at her, but what good would it do her? It will be horribly complicated, and she'd frequently get lost, requiring assistance from me. No, I strongly feel a kid-oriented solution is needed here. I really like the palette/CMYK-color-mixer idea, FWIW. Here is a variant that doesn't depart so much from the current gui: When the "color mixer" tool is selected, the right button bar is replaced with some buckets of paint, a jar of water, and a sink. The cursor now turns into a "color mixer". The bottom button bar is initially the standard color palette, but now the leftmost button is visibly in a selected state. When the user presses and holds a color from the large palette, a bit of that color is put into the selected button on the bottom bar (either with a "glug, glug" sound, indicating pouring a color in, or a "swish, swish" sound indicating mixing). The longer the button is pressed, the more the color is mixed in. If the jar of water is pressed and held, a bit of the color is "washed out" of the selected button and a different "washing color out" sound is played. Again, the longer the button is held, the more color is washed out until all color is gone (note: "gone" is a complete absence of color, not white). If the user clicks on any of the other palette buttons on the bottom bar, the new button is selected for mixing. If the sink button is pressed, then a long "washing up" sound is played and during the sound the colors in the bottom bar all change back to the standard palette (possibly implemented as a gradual fade from current colors to the originals). Ben -- ,-. nSLUG http://www.nslug.ns.ca [EMAIL PROTECTED] \`' Debian http://www.debian.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] ` [ gpg 395C F3A4 35D3 D247 1387 2D9E 5A94 F3CA 0B27 13C8 ] [ pgp 7F DA 09 4B BA 2C 0D E0 1B B1 31 ED C6 A9 39 4F ] _______________________________________________ Tuxpaint-dev mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://tux4kids.net/mailman/listinfo/tuxpaint-dev
