I modded Scratch to make it SO MUCH EASIER to use (alphabetical palette sort, drop blocks anywhere)

liam48D

Some of these changes really should have been added ages ago..

This is a backward compatible Scratch mod that adds a couple of features to make your life easier.

There's a new preferences menu – this contains a few little options that should help out when making things with Scratch:

Drop anywhere (default off) - allows you to drop blocks into any menu or input.
Sort palettes (default on) - automatically sorts custom palettes and menus (variables, lists, custom blocks) alphabetically.

And that's it, for now, but I think it should be handy.

You can get the source here, or get a pre-built SWF here.

Last edited by liam48D (May 11, 2016 12:04:51)

liam48D

Argh, the latest build of Scratch doesn't let me import my project..

Not sure if that's just my project? I can upload it online though.

DigiTechs3

Could you set-up a gh-pages branch and host the swf file there? I don't have a local web server on a school machine

liam48D

DigiTechs3 wrote:
Could you set-up a gh-pages branch and host the swf file there? I don't have a local web server on a school machine

Okay

EDIT: first, I think it only works offline (e.g. https://rawgit.com/liam4/scratch-flash/gh-pages/Scratch.swf?raw=true) and also gh-pages won't work for me (http://liam4.github.io/scratch-flash/Scratch.swf gives 404).

I've been testing with file:// and it works though

Last edited by liam48D (May 11, 2016 12:50:49)

BookOwl

What will you call this?

BookOwl

Doesn't work for me.

DigiTechs3

BookOwl wrote:
Doesn't work for me.

Yeah, after getting into the editor I couldn't get the ‘drop anywhere’ or ‘sort palettes’ options to work:

var emb = document.createElement('embed'); emb.width="100%";emb.src="http://liam4.github.io/scratch-flash/Scratch.swf?extensionDevMode=true";emb.height="100%";emb.name="plugin";emb.type="application/x-shockwave-flash";document.body.appendChild(emb);

BookOwl

DigiTechs3 wrote:
BookOwl wrote:
Doesn't work for me.

Yeah, after getting into the editor I couldn't get the ‘drop anywhere’ or ‘sort palettes’ options to work:
var emb = document.createElement('embed'); emb.width="100%";emb.src="http://liam4.github.io/scratch-flash/Scratch.swf?extensionDevMode=true";emb.height="100%";emb.name="plugin";emb.type="application/x-shockwave-flash";document.body.appendChild(emb);

I couldn't even get it to load.

liam48D

Hmm.. it works for me. After you download and open Scratch.swf in your web browser, what do you get?

The preferences menu is right beside the file and edit menus:

BookOwl wrote:
What will you call this?

The mod that makes your life a little bit easier?

-Io-

Aww, I expected it to be able to get stack blocks into inputs too

But still, I love this

liam48D

-Io- wrote:
Aww, I expected it to be able to get stack blocks into inputs too

But still, I love this

Yeah lol I worked on that for a bit (that was the original motive) but stack blocks -> inputs are not only really glitchy but also hard to code

Thanks!

NickyNouse

liam48D wrote:
Hmm.. it works for me. After you download and open Scratch.swf in your web browser, what do you get?

The preferences menu is right beside the file and edit menus:

BookOwl wrote:
What will you call this?
The mod that makes your life a little bit easier?

How about just “The Mod”?

Also, you could add numerical sorting as well (although it'd be completely useless) and maybe somehow by timestamp? I'd often like to use the block I most recently created

Last edited by NickyNouse (May 11, 2016 17:35:24)

BookOwl

I get a plain white screen, and when I right click I get a context menu that says “Movie not loaded” and “About Flash 10.3”
My browser / operating system: Ubuntu Linux (really puppy 5.7.1), Firefox 46.0, Flash 10.3 (release 183)

liam48D

BookOwl wrote:
I get a plain white screen, and when I right click I get a context menu that says “Movie not loaded” and “About Flash 10.3”
My browser / operating system: Ubuntu Linux (really puppy 5.7.1), Firefox 46.0, Flash 10.3 (release 183)

Argh, not sure..

My browser / operating system: MacOS Macintosh X 10.11, Firefox 49.0, Flash 21.0 (release 0)

Does it work in any other browsers?

NickyNouse wrote:
Also, you could add numerical sorting as well (although it'd be completely useless)

For two reasons, no.

It's completely useless
It's already actually sorted alphanumerically (or is it by character? not sure how JS's less than operator works ) so it's already sorted numerically, pretty much:

NickyNouse wrote:
and maybe somehow by timestamp? I'd often like to use the block I most recently created

While yes, I'd love this, unfortunately timestamps aren't saved with the project..

So custom blocks won't really work with this (if you uncheck sort automatically, the most recently moved or created custom block will appear at the bottom of the list), but variables and lists should work like you explained if you uncheck sorting.

blob8108

What you really want is *natural* sorting, which is what most file browsers use. ie name.split(/(+)/) to split it into “words” (some numbers and some not), and then sort numerically based on those arrays…

BookOwl

liam48D wrote:
BookOwl wrote:
I get a plain white screen, and when I right click I get a context menu that says “Movie not loaded” and “About Flash 10.3”
My browser / operating system: Ubuntu Linux (really puppy 5.7.1), Firefox 46.0, Flash 10.3 (release 183)
Argh, not sure..

My browser / operating system: MacOS Macintosh X 10.11, Firefox 49.0, Flash 21.0 (release 0)

Does it work in any other browsers?

I tried it in Seamonkey, but I got the same result. I'll try updating Flash and seeing if that helps.
EDIT: Apparently, Flash can't be updated on linux

Last edited by BookOwl (May 11, 2016 18:19:48)

scratchyone

Dang! I was just about to make a mod to drop blocks anywhere

I can't wait to try this out, though.

Suggestion:
If you can't get stack blocks to be dropped into other inputs, maybe add an “insert stack block here” feature, if possible. Then have it just modify the json instead of handling dropping

Also, https://scratchyone.github.io/stuffs/liam4modloader.html

Last edited by scratchyone (May 11, 2016 20:53:37)

Dylan5797

-Io- wrote:
Aww, I expected it to be able to get stack blocks into inputs too

But still, I love this

DrKat123

Cool!

Discuss Scratch