For this web-course we will supose that the instalation/unzip of the product (Windows version) was made at the folder: C:\Croquet.
Running Croquet.exe you will have this window:
Click in an empty (black?) part of the image and will appear a new window (title: World).
Click in the line: open and will appear another window. Click: morphic project. Now you will have a yellow little window.
Click it. All is white, empty now! You have opened a new desktop for a new application, a new Squeak-Croquet project.
Our first project will be to show the traditional "Hello World!" sentence.
A new click and the "World" window is back.
Clicking: authoring tools and, in the new window: objects you will have a nice green window.
Drag and drop a "Text" to the left part of the "desktop" and you will have the string: abc. You can close the green window.
If you have a mouse with 3 buttons (or 2 buttons and a wheel) put the pointer over the Text ("abc") and click with the button of the middle. If you don't have 3 buttons and are using Windows: Alt + leftclick.
You will see, around the Text many little buttons (the name of this group of buttons is: halo). Click in the blue button and you will have a new pallete having many lines. Clicking in any place of the desktop the halo disappear.
Look to the next figure. Click in the arrow and drag the line of the figure to the desktop and will appear a new box where we will write our first Squeak-Croquet program!
Click in the square (3th from left) and a window will open having the basic program that puts "abc" in the Text. "self" means: "me", this Text... Change to "Hello World!". Rightclicking in the window will open a Menu. Click in: accept.
Now click in the "exclamation point" (yellow) and the text will change.
But the size of the letters is very little! How to change it?
Click in the Menu button of the halo and click in "text color..." (not "change color...").
At this interesting new blue window, we can choose many options for to format the text. We have, by example, some letters styles with their different sizes.
After to choose the style, size and color (NewYork, 24, red) , click accept.
If the form of the sentence is not good, use the yellow button of the halo to enlarge its "bound square".The halo has buttons to move the object, duplicate, erase etc
To remove the two green windows of script click the buttons having : "O".
The last thing we need to do is to save our project (a very primitive project, I know). Click in the desktop to open again the "World" window.
Click in: save project on file and, in the yellow window, choose a name for it ("MyFirst", by example). Click: "OK" and, in the new window, click: Save on local disk only.
You can now finish this first exercice closing the Squeak-Croquet desktop like all normal window (button at up-right). Will appear a warning about "Quit without saving", but here you will answer: "Yes" because our project is saved.
In the one of the next lessons we will learn how we can see and use interactively a project inside a Croquet 3D world.
NEXT LESSON T. CONTENTS HOMEPAGE
