The Power of Reusable GUI Elements
One can manipulate any graphical element of the Squeak environment by bringing up its halo: a rectangular set of icons representing actions that one can perform on any object. At first I found it cumbersome to have to go through the halo in order to perform any action, like recoloring an object or changing its name. Later I saw that this method is incredibly powerful.
For example, in the EToys
environment, I used the clone action of a halo to duplicate code
snippets I needed in multiple places.
And here is a use, I did not at first believe that would actually work.
I had too many items on my desktop, and the menu I used for selecting them
became longer than the height of my screen, with the items at its end
disappearing beyond the screen's bottom.
In desperation I brought up its halo, and selected the "rotate" action.
Incredibly, this allowed me to rotate the menu, and pick the hidden items.
When object-oriented systems are good, they are very very good.
