Archive for November, 2006

Next semester I will be teaching a multimedia course.  Most of the course focuses on Flash, but we start with some very basic programs.  Squeak is one of those programs.  Squeak is a graphical programming interface based on the SmallTalk programming language.

Here is how I like to introduce Squeak to my class:

Today we will be creating an interactive game.  We will use a paint program to draw a car.  Once we have the car, we will draw a steering wheel that will be used to maneuver the car.  Once all this is working, we will create a race track and program the car to detect if the driver is steering the car on or off the road.  Someone playing the game will use the mouse to turn the steering wheel in such a way as to keep the car on the road.  If the car leaves the road, it will disappear from the track and start back at the beginning.

With Squeak, all of this takes about fifteen minutes.

Squeak is a graphical programming interface.  There is a paint tool and everything that is drawn has programming properties.  An object can be linked to other drawn objects.  In this way, the direction of the car can be linked to the degree of rotation (the heading) of the steering wheel.  All the programming tools are simple drag-and-drop objects.

If you are looking for a tool to introduce programming to a youngster, Squeak is perfect.

http://www.ieforge.com/InlineSearch/HomePage

I use Internet Explorer as my main browser.  I have it locked down to prevent any problems and I don’t visit questionable sites.  Steve Gibson uses it.  That’s good enough for me.  Besides, there are several sites that I must use every day and these sites have Active X controls that don’t work in Firefox.

There is one feature of Firefox that I like… the search tool.  That little search box at the bottom of the page is great.  More importantly, the F3 key works from within the tool.  IE’s search tool is terrible.  CTRL-F produces a pop-up box that always gets in the way.  On top of that, the treasured F3 doesn’t work at all.  Why have a two-key combination when one key will work great?

Then I found Inline Search from the guys at IEForge.  This free IE add-on gives the same user experience during a search as does Firefox.  There is no pop-up box and the F3 key (or shift-F3 to find previous) works just as it should in any Windows application.

In addition, there are Highlight All and Match Case options just like in Firefox.

The extension works in IE 6 or IE 7.  If you are using Internet Explorer, this is one of those things you must have.