Why does the Squeak interface look and act so antiquated?

Question

Don't get me wrong - I love Smalltalk, but...

To me, the Squeak interface is one of the biggest turnoffs. I love Smalltalk - not the user interface. One only has to contrast modern interfaces like GNOME, MacOS X, and Windows Vista with their combination of ease of use and visually pleasing eye-candy with Squeak's flat 2-D cartoony 16-color (or is it 256 colors?) interface.

Aren't we ever going to see modern user interface design put into Squeak?

Or am I missing something entirely and the current crop of computer user interfaces are all wrong?

Answer 1

Use one of the many alternative UIs instead of the default look & feel. Pharo's looks a lot like OSX, for instance.

Ramon Leon has another article, Fixing Squeak's Sesame Street Looking Windows, there's Zurgle, and probably a lot more others, announced periodically on squeak-dev.