Help - The Squeak Environment - 2. Basics about this window and about squeaking

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If you are reading this in Squeak what you're seeing looks something like this:

This window has a topbar in which there is a title - The Squeak Environment - and four icons. The window can be moved around with the mouse by means of the topbar, resized by dragging the right and under sides of the window, (un)collapsed by pressing the circle on the right in the topbar, and be made (not) full screen by clicking on the two overlapping squares. It has a scrollbar to the right and a menu that can be gotten by clicking on the left square. And the whole window can be removed by clicking the x (which you are not yet invited to try).

The containing window in Squeak is called a Project window.

Now that you know where you're in - in Squeak, in some Project, reading a text called The Squeak Environment - three more basic thing before starting to answer the question "What is Squeak?".

The first basic thing is: How to save and quit Squeak.

You do this by moving your cursor to the Project window, left-clicking and take one of the last 4 options. Doing just "save" just saves - ALL of the current system, which will be restarted precisely as you left it when having done "save and quit". Generally it is wise to save every half hour or so, and immediately after whatever you made you really don't want to lose. Whatever got properly saved almost certainly will be easily recovered the next time you start Squeak, indeed exactly as and where you left it.

The second basic thing is what to do if you run into a so-called Walkback. A Walkback looks like so

A Walkback arises as follows: Squeak is all the time in the background responding to your input - which is why you can make things happen in the environment. Your input consists of mouse-clicks, mouse-movements, or keyboard-presses, and are best conceived of as messages to Squeak and to the computer. Now it may happen you give Squeak some message it cannot handle. Squeak's response to what it cannot handle is with a window that tells you it doesn't understand a message, and Squeak offers you three options: Proceed, Abandon and Debug. At this point it is wise that when you run into this, to click Abandon. This will return you and Squeak to where you were before you sent the message that you somehow composed and send to Squeak that Squeak had no other programmed response to - which is the reason it sent you the response it doesn't understand your message.

The third basic thing to know is what to do if Squeak appears not to respond anymore.

You can stop whatever Squeak is doing at the moment by keying in (on Windows) Alt-. i.e. the Alt Key "Alt" with the dot key "." On Apple this is Cmd-.

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