[lively-kernel] Parts and tools review

[Daniel Ingalls]

Hi all -

We have had a wonderful few months of growth and experimentation with the new version of Lively.  In many ways it has been a sort of "brainstorming" period and the results are both delightful and somewhat chaotic.

As with any brainstorming session, a useful follow-on activity is to classify and critique those results in order to get rid of old things that are not needed, recognize missing items that are needed, and to assemble a stable and less chaotic platform to serve as the basis of the next growth period.

This is the kind of thing that is easier to do in one room over a few hours, but let's see what we can do with an exchange of email to get started.

Here are some thoughts...

Go through the Parts Bin, grouping things that should be together, making things consistent, adding comments, fixing bugs, and getting rid of what is not needed.  It may help to think not only of what kind of things we have, but also what kind of users we have -- for instance, it might be good to have a few 'basic-X' categories at the top for newbies.

Put some uniformity in droppable properties:  do we drop the part directly, or do we put it in the world and then tear off droppable properties?

Make at least 3 more parts bins available.  Until we do this, I don't think we are going to see any growth of interesting parts from people outside HPI.

Identify a set of 'markets' that we can focus on to critique the set of available capabilities and thus the choice of multiple parts bins and parts bin categories...
	Building 'slide' presentations
	Doing web mashups
	Maintaining our system
	Simple activities for newbies
	Physics simulations, constraints, etc
	Sound and music
	Games
	Collaboration
	Integration with social media such as Facebook, Twitter and the like
	Phone, pad, and touch support
	...

Identify a set of basic capabilities that are stable (don't change over a few months) and reliable (run well in most browsers).  It is essential to do this if we want to capture first-time visitors.

We don't need to *do* all this, but if we have a vision of where we want to go, then our daily activities will naturally lead to better alignment.

So, Lively People... What are the three things you would most like to see added, removed, or made better?

  - D