[Sugar-devel] customizing activity launch (was Re: [IAEP] View Slides an alternative to PowerPoint?)

[Eben Eliason]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 9:26 AM, Bert Freudenberg<bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
> (moving to devel-list)
>
> Yes indeed, but we still have no obvious technical solution for this
> in Sugar.
>
> Adding a pre-made project to the Journal might work, but currently it
> would be resumed regularly and modified on stopping. It would need to
> be marked as a template so that when keeping it, a copy is saved by
> default. However, finding this template in the Journal would be hard.
>
> Making it into a separate activity bundle seems somewhat pretentious
> to me, it would just be Etoys under a different name, right? And it
> would suffer from the same resume-by-default problem like Etoys, in
> that the Sugar UI makes it not easy enough to launch a fresh instance.
>
> Ideas welcome.

That's hard. I think one point here is that there's often a tradeoff
between flexibility and simplicity (though not always). Etoys is
extraordinarily powerful, and can do all kinds of awesome things, but
if someone really JUST wants a simple slideshow, a tool designed just
for this, with a few really basic slide templates all ready to go the
moment a new activity is started might be worthwhile as well.

For Etoys itself, maybe some of those steps could be collapsed.
Perhaps instead of clicking on "new project", there are simply a
number of different primitive types of projects to choose from, one of
which is a "book." Maybe clicking on this can set up the UI as best it
can for that project, revealing those tools, adding the first page,
creating a sample slide with placeholder text, etc. This would reduce
those first 5 or six steps to about 2 or 3, right?

Eben


> - Bert -
>
> On 02.07.2009, at 14:51, Walter Bender wrote:
>
>> I still wish there was a
>> launch-this-project-and-we'll-have-taken-care-of-steps-1–5-below-for-
>> you
>> Etoys bundle kicking around that we could just ship with the Journal.
>>
>> -walter
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 6:31 AM, Bert
>> Freudenberg<bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
>>> Since this does not seem to be obvious: It's really simple to create
>>> nice presentations in Etoys, there is not even scripting involved:
>>>
>>> 0. Start a fresh Etoys copy (in Strawberry, right-click the Etoys
>>> icon
>>> and choose "start" rather than resuming the latest project)
>>> 1. click "new project"
>>> 2. From the "supplies" box in the toolbar, drag out a "book".
>>> 3. Use the top-left button to toggle more book controls
>>> 4. Use the "+" button to add pages
>>> 5. Place text on a page by dragging out a Text from the "supplies"
>>> box, resize after right-clicking by dragging the yellow handle
>>> 6. Import images either via the clipboard or directly from the
>>> Journal
>>> (using the Journal icon in the top right)
>>> 7. Add annotations using the paint tool
>>> 8. Add visual and sound effects for turning pages in the book's menu.
>>> 9. Play with the options in the book's menu (like "view pages full
>>> screen") etc.
>>>
>>> ... and of course you can place scripted objects / animations on the
>>> pages too if you like.
>>>
>>> Also, the Etoys QuickGuides (accessible from the left-most button in
>>> the toolbar) have an entire section on Books.
>>>
>>> - Bert -
>
>
>
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