• when you drag a costume, the costume list automatically scrolls back to the top. when there are hundreds of costumes, it is very hard to sort them with all the scrolling.
  
  
• when you show or hide variables, the blocks pane scrolls back to the top. when there are many variables, it is very hard to show and hide multiple variables because it keeps scrolling.
  
  
• the variable list is in chronological order of creation. when there are many variables it is unclear where any are, especially when it's not your project. furthermore, it is no longer organized and clean. lists in one group (for example, lists prefixed “element-”) are all over the place instead of next to each other.
  
  
• deleting blocks by dragging them back into the blocks pane causes the blocks pane to scroll up. when you are deleting things and then replacing them with other things, the scrolling gets in the way. it is unnatural.
  
  
• “new broadcast” is at the bottom of the list. if there are hundreds of broadcasts it is necessary to scroll through them all to make another.
  
  
• the menus for broadcasts and costumes are excessively slow to navigate when there are many broadcasts or costumes. if what you desire is at the bottom, you have to sit around and wait for it to show up. pages are much more efficient.
  
  
• it is hard to drag scripts around. this is because you cannot scroll and drag a script simultaneously. if you want to add a script at the bottom to a script up top, you need to drag the script a little, scroll up, drag it some more, and so forth. this becomes a major issue when there are large amounts of scripts. i suggest that the scripts pane scroll automatically when a script is dragged to the borders.
  
  
• “clean up” makes things more unorganized. scripts go all over the place and if there are a lot, it is hard to find them again. a vertical column is more efficient because you don't have to scroll sideways - you need only continue to scroll down to find what you look for. furthermore, multiple column of scripts cause a shortage of space because they are packed together. because of the issue above, it is virtually impossible to re-organize them. i suggest a reversion to the vertical-line method, or a choice of how you wish to have scripts arranged.
  
  
• copied scripts appear in uncertain locations. when i drag a script from one sprite into another, it appears wherever it wants to, causing me to have to look for it.
  
  
• “duplicate” is not in a consistent place. when i right-click a stack block, “duplicate” if the first item on the list. but for procedures it is second, for broadcasts it is fourth, and for variable reporters, a huge list of every variable is in the way. i suggest putting “duplicate” first on every menu just for some consistency.
  

now that i've griped a lot, i should tell you that this is all the problems I have with 2.0. it is a beautiful program and i'm grateful you made it available and free. you dont have to use any ideas but i feel like they wouldnt hurt user comprehension or friendliness.

I agree with you on every one of those. And many of those are also a problem in 1.4

Wes64 wrote:

a lot of stuff

These are great, Wes64! They're little things, but they're pesky, and the peskiness adds up.
I'll add a few issues for these.

Wes64 wrote:

“* “new broadcast” is at the bottom of the list. if there are hundreds of broadcasts it is necessary to scroll through them all to make another.”

Hmm, I'm not sure we want to optimize for 100+ broadcasts. But if it won't hurt new users, maybe we could move it to the top.

copied scripts appear in uncertain locations. when i drag a script from one sprite into another, it appears wherever it wants to, causing me to have to look for it.

What would be the recommended behavior? It's kind of sloppy to drop them on top of other scripts, so I'm not sure what to do about this…

Lightnin wrote:

copied scripts appear in uncertain locations. when i drag a script from one sprite into another, it appears wherever it wants to, causing me to have to look for it.

What would be the recommended behavior? It's kind of sloppy to drop them on top of other scripts, so I'm not sure what to do about this…

in 1.4 it appeared at the bottom of all the scripts. i'm sure this location will work fine so long as you add better ways to drag scripts around.

About the scrolling while holding onto scripts thing- that annoys me too! But one advantage 2.0 has is zooming out the script pane, easing this up a lot. Still, it can be bothersome. They still need the border scrolling. Full support for all of this!

Scratch on!

Any chance we could get to make Folders inside Scratch for our costumes?

I agree on every one.

dusty22 wrote:

Any chance we could get to make Folders inside Scratch for our costumes?

It would be awesome if a scratcher could organize their sprites into groups: folders.

About copying scripts between sprites - doesn't it appear at the same location it had in the sprite it came from? I think I've observed that (not that I'm particularly keen on that behaviour, I have to admit…)

While we're in the griping mode - this is the forum for it, after all - a couple of thoughts from my (fairly limited - only this year) experience of using Scratch:

1. Regarding finding your way around lots of scripts, I'm seriously missing some kind of ‘show where block is’ functionality for the drop-down of custom blocks - when I go to work on a project with loads of scripts (such as InterXeptor - that is pretty much the only serious Scratch project I've worked on), I find I spend a lot of time just looking for where I ended up putting a particular custom block's script, since I haven't been to it for a while so can't quite recall where it ended up. It'd be a great time-saver to just right-click on a custom-block in the left-hand list, and choose ‘show where block is’. Then the scripts pane would automatically place the scrollbars such that the chosen block is within view. Dunno if that's hard to implement or not…?

2. Manipulating strings… need I say much more? Well, we all know it's pretty painful to have to do that in Scratch, and a lot of people end up using lists. However, it seems to me that a single, very simple, extra block would make a huge difference in this area. We already have “letter N of STRING”, how about “letters M to N of STRING”? Would've thought it should be pretty straightforward to implement, and easy for anyone to understand what it means…

Any takers?

DadOfMrLog wrote:

About copying scripts between sprites - doesn't it appear at the same location it had in the sprite it came from? I think I've observed that (not that I'm particularly keen on that behaviour, I have to admit…)

While we're in the griping mode - this is the forum for it, after all - a couple of thoughts from my (fairly limited - only this year) experience of using Scratch:

1. Regarding finding your way around lots of scripts, I'm seriously missing some kind of ‘show where block is’ functionality for the drop-down of custom blocks - when I go to work on a project with loads of scripts (such as InterXeptor - that is pretty much the only serious Scratch project I've worked on), I find I spend a lot of time just looking for where I ended up putting a particular custom block's script, since I haven't been to it for a while so can't quite recall where it ended up. It'd be a great time-saver to just right-click on a custom-block in the left-hand list, and choose ‘show where block is’. Then the scripts pane would automatically place the scrollbars such that the chosen block is within view. Dunno if that's hard to implement or not…?

2. Manipulating strings… need I say much more? Well, we all know it's pretty painful to have to do that in Scratch, and a lot of people end up using lists. However, it seems to me that a single, very simple, extra block would make a huge difference in this area. We already have “letter N of STRING”, how about “letters M to N of STRING”? Would've thought it should be pretty straightforward to implement, and easy for anyone to understand what it means…

Any takers?

i think they might have changed the copying of scripts functionality already.

1. do you know that the scripts pane can zoom out? this way you can zoom out and quickly find the definition.

2. i actually built a work-around procedure for this. http://beta.scratch.mit.edu/projects/10057026 but I agree it should be added. its kind of an important function and before i could actually code the work-around correctly, i was stuck.

1. Yeah, zooming is OK, except once you're at highest zoom, and you've found your script, when you zoom back in to actually do something with it, you still have to find it again, because the zoom repositioning is often a bit odd…

2. Yeah - useful stuff you've got in there. Not really considering custom blocks here, though - more thinking about performance (e.g. if you need to do string manipulation regularly for some reason, perhaps every frame of a game if it's kind of array-based, or something). It's not clear to me if putting letter-by-letter string-manipulation scripting like this inline is faster than having it use a custom block - I've kind of assumed it is, but not really tested… So, yeah, I'd have thought an operator block like “letters M to N of STRING” was straightforward enough to implement, and clear enough in meaning, to be a decent candidate to add to the operators (just under “letter M of STRING”, I expect) - and the difference it'd make could be substantial.

@DadOfMrLog: I agree, a letters m through n block would be great to have. When adding new Scratch blocks, it's generally a priority to make sure that there aren't too many blocks (so new Scratchers won't be overwhelmed) - but I think this block would be quite self-explanatory (since there's one just like it), and it would still make a big difference for people working on complex projects. I mean most other programming languages have this (in the form of a method like substring(x, y)), and it wouldn't be that bad if it was added to the operators category.

I agree with most all of this. One thing: use capitol letters when necessary please.

DadOfMrLog wrote:

1. Yeah, zooming is OK, except once you're at highest zoom, and you've found your script, when you zoom back in to actually do something with it, you still have to find it again, because the zoom repositioning is often a bit odd…

2. Yeah - useful stuff you've got in there. Not really considering custom blocks here, though - more thinking about performance (e.g. if you need to do string manipulation regularly for some reason, perhaps every frame of a game if it's kind of array-based, or something). It's not clear to me if putting letter-by-letter string-manipulation scripting like this inline is faster than having it use a custom block - I've kind of assumed it is, but not really tested… So, yeah, I'd have thought an operator block like “letters M to N of STRING” was straightforward enough to implement, and clear enough in meaning, to be a decent candidate to add to the operators (just under “letter M of STRING”, I expect) - and the difference it'd make could be substantial.

That block has an extremely simple workaround.

sccar3 wrote:

I agree with most all of this. One thing: use capitol letters when necessary please.

its worth pointing out that your grammar is far from perfect. my grammar is neither a blemish on the website nor is it a threat to anyone. your order shall not be obeyed

ImagineIt wrote:

DadOfMrLog wrote:

…

2. Yeah - useful stuff you've got in there. Not really considering custom blocks here, though - more thinking about performance (e.g. if you need to do string manipulation regularly for some reason, perhaps every frame of a game if it's kind of array-based, or something). It's not clear to me if putting letter-by-letter string-manipulation scripting like this inline is faster than having it use a custom block - I've kind of assumed it is, but not really tested… So, yeah, I'd have thought an operator block like “letters M to N of STRING” was straightforward enough to implement, and clear enough in meaning, to be a decent candidate to add to the operators (just under “letter M of STRING”, I expect) - and the difference it'd make could be substantial.

That block has an extremely simple workaround.

Indeed, there is a work-around for it. But my suspicion is that having the block implemented natively would be much more fast and efficient than a version with a custom block. I think adding this block could be really crucial for people trying to work with cloud lists for example, where they might be trying to interpret data that is compressed and in large amounts.

Great to see “duplicate” and “delete” at the top of variable drop-downs now! -make so much difference to certain things.

Lightnin wrote:

Wes64 wrote:

copied scripts appear in uncertain locations. when i drag a script from one sprite into another, it appears wherever it wants to, causing me to have to look for it.

What would be the recommended behavior? It's kind of sloppy to drop them on top of other scripts, so I'm not sure what to do about this…

How about dragging the script onto the sprite switches to that sprite's scripting pane? Then you can continue dragging it to where you want it to go. I'm thinking of how OS X's Finder lets you drag folks into folders… (I think it's called spring-loading?)

Some of my script only works when I click on it and drag it around the script area… Has anyone else had this problem?

samanthamanthaleelee wrote:

Some of my script only works when I click on it and drag it around the script area… Has anyone else had this problem?

Please don't necrobump age old topics with irrelevant posts.