These demo's are really just my results as a beginner. Hopefully others will jump in to correct mistakes and/or suggest better ways to do things. I am intentional assuming very little prior knowledge so that other beginners find them easy to follow. Cooincidentally I myself have "little prior knowledge" :-) I do not intend to reproduce information already available in the swiki but instead to link where appropriate. If you are reading this and spot text that needs linking then please edit the page and provide the link. The swiki is BIG, the swiki is DEEP, and I have only skimmed it's surface and shallow depths. Good luck!
Note #1: These demo's are written using Squeak 3.9 on Windows XP
Note #2: I am writing this and subsequent demo's with the mind-set I initially had, ie, wanting to get coding as quickly as possible. Alas in my case, knowing nothing about either Squeak or Smalltalk, I had to take an almost random walk through the swiki, various web sites and books before getting a single line of code to work. The aim here is to allow other beginners to actually see some results without all this upfront effort, introducing new aspects of Squeak/Smalltalk only when absolutely required, so that digesting other Squeak/Smalltalk information will be a lot easier after some hands-on experience.
We have to start somewhere so...
1) DOWNLOADING: Create a folder called "Squeak3.9" and download the Squeak zip file from the link on http://www.squeak.org/ (in the list of news items). At the time of writing this file is "Squeak3.9-RC1-7061.zip". If, without extracting, you open up the zip file then you would be forgiven for thinking you had mistakenly downloaded something for Mac OS X instead of Windows. Fear not since this zip only includes the "image" and associated files, not the main exe. For now just extract the files from the "Squeak3.9g-7061" folder in the zip file EXCEPT the ".DS_Store" file (which really is OS X specific). We need an EXE so go to http://www.squeak.org/Download/ and download the Win32 VM. Extract it into the same directory. If you are a belt & braces type now is a good time to make a copy of the whole directory (excluding/deleting the zip files if you want to save some space).
2) STARTING: At this stage we only have one image file so Squeak can be started simply by clicking on "Squeak.exe" (see wiki for handling multiple image files). When I do this there is a noticeable delay before a window appears. You will be saving often so let's do that right now: click on the background of the window to get the "World" menu (or simply hit the escape key) then select "save". When you are finished for the day use "save and quit".
3) UPDATING (need to be online!): on the left hand side of the screen should be an orangie/brownie tab called "Squeak". This is a "Flap" which I suppose differs from a "tab" because clicking on it slides-out a panel revealing some buttons. Click on the "load code updates" button and, when it has finished, click on the "save" button (which I assume does the same as the World/save menu). Click on the "Squeak" flap again to close it.
4) PREPARATION 1: The default Squeak window shows two child-windows with the title "Workspace". As a newbie you are probably not interested in changes so close the one listing "3.9 changes" using the X at the top left of the window. The other window has some useful links that you may want to refer to later so for now just "collapse" it using the O at the top right (this is like minimising a normal window except it is left on the main window, ie, there is no windows-like task bar). Maximise the main Squeak window and save again.
5) PREPARATION 2: We need somewhere to put code so from the World menu choose "open..." then "class browser" and we get... a "System Browser". Huh? Don't worry about the naming because the System Browser really does allow you to browse classes. The upper lefthand pane is a list of "class categories" and we need our own. Right-click in this list to get a menu and choose the "add item...", eh, item. I chose "DocsDemos" but you are free to choose what you like as long as it does not clash with other categories (also be aware that there is a naming convention going on (not relevent here)). So enter a new category name and "accept" it ("accept" is like Windows "OK" but in Squeak generally means something WILL change as a consequence). Save again at this point. Now would be an opportune time to seek info on the System Browsers operation and features but you may progress without doing so if you wish.
