[Etoys] A few notes on Bookmorph

Milan Zimmermann milan.zimmermann at sympatico.ca
Thu Oct 19 00:36:52 EDT 2006


Hi,

There are a few confusing things about Bookmorph that I wanted to mention (the 
first for a long time). Neither of them are bugs, so I'll try to be brief:

1. This was very confusing to me when I first used the Bookmorph years ago. 
The page controls (> < etc) are way too small, for first time user the 
Bookmorph looks like an empty page without any way to move around. (I know 
there is baloon popus on the controls, but I remember I did not put mouse 
over them, as they seemed insignificant) Once user knows the little ants are 
controls it's good, but I would really like to have the page controls very 
large and stand out, perhaps ellipses with color background, because there 
seems lots of space across. There seems enough space even without making the 
dark ribbon on top taller. (I think on the small OLPC screen the controls 
must be almost unnoticable.)

2. Another confusing thing is that the only way to move to book around is to 
bring the hallos. That by itself is ok, with two comments: 
	- All other non-trivial object presentations, (not sure how to express it, so 
by example) such as "Sound" "Movie Player", "All Scripts" can be picked up by 
left-clicking (red) somewhere in the non-input area. The BookMorph cannot, 
only by invoking the halo. It would be nice to pick it up by left-clicking on 
the darker control ribbon on top.
	- Also, unlike other morphs that are a composition, if user first 
right-clicks (yellow) on the dark "ribbon" with the controls, a halo is 
brought on it (AllignmentMorph), not on the outermost book frame.

Just wanted to mention this, Milan


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