This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz
by James Robertson.
Original Post: Make It Work, Make It Right
Feed Title: Pollock
Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/pollock-rss.xml
Feed Description: Pollock - the next VW GUI
Folks, it is very important that you read Vassili's post regarding how a Tool Maker and an Application Builder uses Pollock
As I read it, I sat here grinning like a crazy! Why? Because his post points out the main difference between my job and Vassili's. I am a GUI Framework maker, where Vassili is a Tool Maker and User Experience facilitator. To a large extent, Vassili is my #1 client. It works like this: My work enables him, his work enables you. And by way him enabling you, he provides the view into my enabling you also.
Where I, in my posts, try to educate on how to use the widgets and basic features of the Pollock framework, Vassili has taken that a great step forward and shown features that you would and should use in creating your applications.
So, where I use the #paneAt: feature because I want to show how it works and talk about the guts of Pollock, Vassili says "Yeah, But For This Tool, That's Just Not Needed." Where I go on and on about #selection and #selections and so on, Vassili says "Use #selectionDo:... It makes the whole issue moot.".
My purpose in doing these series of articles is to begin to give you a model in your mind about how to use Pollock. Yes, when I write these, and the code, I see the rather horrible "User Experience" that the result provides. But I'm not aiming at that. Frankly, it takes too long for me, in my overly verbose way, to just do the bad job of User Experience that I'm showing in our sample application as it is.
I have a list here for the next six topics: ResizingSplitters, Dynamic Scrollbars, WordWrap, Main Menu bar, Toolbar and Popup menus. Then I need to take some time to finish the TabControl, address some of the visual bugs we see, such as in the scrollbars and the text edit, and then republish Pollock and get into TabControls and Forms.
During all of this, I will continue to simply go into the details on how to use the widgets, and hope, over time, Vassili will now and again do a post or two about the "Right Way" to use the features. In this way, I'll try to cover "Make It Work", and let Vassili cover "Make It Right"
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