Advice on implementing a zooming interface?

[chombee]

On Thu, 2008-04-17 at 20:50 +0530, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
> On Wednesday 16 Apr 2008 6:35:18 pm chombee wrote:
> > I have tested a paper + card version of a prototype story writing
> > tool with children, and now need to implement a computer version
> > of the prototype. I don't have my interface mockups handy, but it
> > is card-based story writing. Imagine looking down at a set of 10,
> > 20 or 30 or so "story cards" on a table, you write a bit of the
> > story on each card. The interface needs to be able to provide a
> > zoomed-out overview of all the cards, and to zoom-in on each
> > individual card, and the cards need to have text entry widgets on
> > them for the user to input their story (they also need text labels
> > and images).
> There are many ways in which you can try out your ideas in Squeak.
> 
> 1. You could put together a story board in Squeak with a few EToys and some 
> simple scripts. See attached picture for an example.
> 2. Use a Holder (turn on show thumbnails mode in playfield options) and put 
> all your story boards (playfields) into this. Drag each story board out to 
> edit it.
> 3. Use the Book EToy and use one page per story board. Then you can sort the 
> pages using page sorter.
> 4. Create one project per story board and use the 
> Catalog->Multimedia->ThreadNavigator to create a story line out of these 
> projects. The "edit thread" option displays thumbnails of all projects.
> 
> Enjoy .. Subbu

Thanks Subbu. I'm looking into it, but am still at the point of being
completely overwhelmed by croquet, squeak, morphic, tweak, and
everything, trying to figure out what I can and can't do with them and
how quickly.