etoys_teacher

http://www.squeakland.org/

Some great tutorials at this site

PROBLEMS: Saving: It saves in the journal but when we take out the USB key it disappears. Hence, to save we need to put in a second USB key and drag it from the Journal onto that key. Saving: When you click Keep a grid appears but the saving box with the jumping figures doesn't. But it does appear in the Journal.

Paint tools: Undo only goes back one step

QUESTIONS Questions that students asked about Etoys, while doing the introductory car tutorials (answers by Kasparov):

1) How do you get out of paint? **Answer**: Click either Keep or Toss 2) Can you import sprites? **Answer**: I don't know how to 3) How do you run a script? **Answer**: Click on the clock? 4) Where did you get that stop, step, go controller from? **Answer**: Supplies 5) Help! My car has disappeared! **Answer**: Script menu > reveal my object 6) If my car runs over the trash can will it disappear? 7) How do you randomise? **Answer**: Click on the supplies icon on a script header and get a random tile 8) How do you change background colour? **Answer**: world viewer > color category pane

9a) How do you program keyboard control? This is explained here: [|How to make space invaders in etoys] "I want keyboard control for firing off bullets
 * extract**:

Middle click on the World and open the World Viewer. Then open the input category and you will see world's lastKeystroke. Press some keys on the keyboard and you will see the values change in the viewer.

Tear off a Yes/No Test unit and drop it into the bullet create script

Drag world's lastKeystroke (not by the assignment arrow) into the Test section of the test unit. Then replace the part after the = sign with  arrow"

9b) How to press w key once for continuous forward movement? 9c) How to have rotation only when the d (right) or a (left) keys are pressed?

10) How do you start a new project, from the screen of an existing project? (at the moment I can only do it by quitting etoys and starting again) 11) How do you bring the car to the front (of another object such as a road) **Answer**: morphic menu > bring to front 12) How to automatically speed up a car on straight section of a road and then slow down rapidly on a tight corner? 13) How do I lock a background so it doesn't move? 14) Paint tools: How do you copy and paste a section of a drawing? eg. copy and paste the car wheels?
 * Answer**: Use the Stamp tools (bottom left of paint pallet)

COMMENTS, QUESTIONS, BUGS RE THE LATEST ETOYS VERSION [|release notes] [|download]

PROBLEMS, QUESTIONS 1) Default saving on Windows goes 5 layers deep: C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\ My Squeak\ Squeaklets

I don't think this is a convenient default saving location and will cause confusion for those using Etoys for the first time. Here is what the beginner will have to do:

Saving by just clicking on the Keep icon (not holding down mouse):
 * Save correctly, this requires clicking on the My Squeak folder
 * Note the path of the My Squeak folder is not shown, which makes it harder to locate later
 * Note that it saves in the Squeaklet folder, not the folder that you have to click on but a subfolder of the My Squeak folder. Actually the popup balloon says this, which is confusing language: "Save in the place specified below, and in the Squeaklets folder on your local disc"

Saving by clicking on Keep icon and holding down the mouse:
 * How would a new user know to hold down the mouse? It is not mentioned in the balloon help for the Keep icon
 * I don't see any difference than the Publish and the Publish As... options. I would have thought that Publish As... would offer folders with paths
 * Click on Publish to Different Server. For me that option implies publishing on a network but actually it is what you have to do to obtain the folder with path options
 * Publish This Project window does not offer an option to create your own new folder

This is not user friendly saving

2) Help: When you load the paint tools the Help fades out. You can click the arrow to the next page but can't Jump to a different Help sequence for the Paint tools. You have to close the Paint tools then Jump to a different Help page and then reopen the Paint tools

3) Can't find a timer? The clock on a script has a tick rate, the default is 8 ticks per second, but how can I program that to display a timer?

( you set the clicks to one per second on a script and then make at time variable which increases by one with each tick)
 * Answer**: See Project 6, racing car tutorials: http://www.squeakland.org/tutorials/activities/

4) How do you set the "preserve trash" preference mentioned in the trash can help balloon? Open the Preferences tool (from world's halo menu), type a keyword (such as "trash" or "eToy") into the Search pane, hit the return key and you'll see buttons for all preferences matching the keyword. Click on a checkbox to toggle the value.
 * Answer from Scott Wallace**:

5) Show code textually is a nice feature - would be even better if you could open the code window to reveal all the code at once - good for learning by copying and pasting to other media

First set the "eToyFriendly" preference is to false.
 * Answer from Scott Wallace**:

To see the textual versions of all scripts of all the players in the project, in a single scrolling galley, use "summary of scripts", found in the "authoring tools" menu (obtainable via the world's halo menu.)

To see them presented in a conventional Smalltalk message-list, use "browser for scripts", also in the "authoring tools" menu.

To see the textual versions of a single player's scripts, presented in a message-list, choose "browse class" from the more... branch of the menu at the top of a Viewer for the object.

6) There doesn't appear to be a version number? Most software I use has an About button which tells you the version number of the whole package. It can be handy to know which version you are using, especially when discussing compatibility issues. I looked in the etoys folder, it's not there either.

Bring up the halo for the "world" (by right-clicking/cmd-clicking on an empty area of your Squeak desktop,) then click on the menu icon to get the "world" menu. The first item in that menu is "about this system", which reports the system name and version number
 * Answer from Scott Wallace**:

7) How do you program a popup window to announce something, eg. car wins the race?

REALLY USEFUL (more detail in [|release notes]) Display Scaling

Right Click for Halo
VERY INTERESTING (more detail in [|release notes])