Morphic Tutorial Suite for Beginners

Q: I need to find a Morphic tutorial. I did a google search and the 
examples there didn't help me. The book by Guzdial is confusing to me 
and I have also looked on the GT website. I am just trying to create a 
frame, text area, and some buttons to process something.

A: Having just gone through this a few months ago, here is what I 
would recommend for introductory reading/playing material:

1. First, read through the "ReadMe.txt" that is included in the base 
distribution.

2. Play with all the cool stuff in the "Welcome to ... Squeak" window 
and "The Worlds of Squeak" in the base image to get familiar with 
interacting with Squeak.

3. Do the "Painting", "Handles", and "Make your own car" tutorials 
pointed to by http://www.squeakland.org/author/etoys.html

4. Do John Maloney's "Morphic Tutorial" and "Tutorial on Morphic" 
which are pointed to by http://www.squeak.org/documentation/index.html

5. Do the "Counter Tutorial" pointed to by 
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/30 (There are a bunch of other 
interesting Morphic tutorials linked to by this same page).

6. Do the fishy Wonderland tutorial at 
http://www.consultar.com/Squeak/tutorial/ (I couldn't get through to 
this the last time I tried)

7. Look through the Squeak FAQ, Squeak Bons Mots, and other great 
stuff at http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/1

8. Make sure that you read Basic Squeak Development Tools linked to 
from the Squeak FAQ "Programming in Squeak" section. You may also want 
to print out the Squeak Quick Reference documents on the Swiki.

9. Read through the "MorphicLayoutArticle" project at 
http://209.143.91.36/super/gallery1 (and play with a few of the other 
project while you're at it!)

10. Pick a modest project, and start building it. It's probably 
easiest to start by modifying something that already exists rather 
than starting from scratch, but do whatever you're comfortable with.

One of the first projects that I did was to modify the BouncingAtoms 
object to use MovingEyes instead of just dots so that I had a bunch of 
flying eyeballs looking around.

11. Ask questions on the Squeak Email List. It's a great source of 
help!

-- David Faught (posted to the Squeak Email List, Feb 5, 2003)