Building browsers with Glamour talk at Smalltalks 2011 (video)

At Smalltalks 2011, I also gave a demo talk about building browsers with Glamour.

I started with asking who has ever extended Object with a custom method needed for a specific application. Extending Object is such a no brainer in Smalltalk, that everyone has done it at one point of another. As expected, everyone in the audience answered affirmatively. Why did they do it? Because context matters, and Object does not have to be the same in every application. Instead, we can customize Object and benefit from it fitting contextual needs.

I then asked: Who has ever extended the Inspector? Only a couple did. Why so? If you see value in customising your language, why should you not see value in customising your tools?

The reason is simple: cost. Or at least, the perceived cost. The Inspector is not built to be extensible, and neither are the rest of the browsers in the classic Smalltalk environment. Furthermore, building a new tool from scratch is not trivial, either.

Building interactive browsers should be so affordable that everyone does it at one point or another. Glamour is an engine that makes it happen.