As we've transitioned away from the old Squeak code base, and have yet to release the Scratch 2.0 code base under an open source license, many of you are probably wondering what our plans are. So here's an update!

Open sourcing the Scratch 2.0 Editor
We're working on a standalone / offline version of the 2.0 editor that we hope to release for alpha testing at the end of June. Once the kinks are worked out, and we have time to do the work necessary to prepare the code for release and add documentation (not insignificant), we plan to release the offline editor under an open source license. Our best guess is that this will be ready at the end of this Summer, or early Fall.

Scratch Extensions
Scratch Extensions will provide a framework for supporting additional hardware (like LEGO WeDo, Scratch Boards, or other things you create?). Eventually they may allow for accessing external data like web services, and possibly additional functionality (sort of like plugins). The target release dates for the first hardware extensions is the end of the summer. We'll release more information / protocols for this later in the summer. This should allow for lots of interesting and fun hackery.

HTML 5 project Player
We've also been working on an HTML 5 player for Scratch projects which we are planning to release under an open source license as well. We're not certain of the timeline for that release yet - I'll update when I have more information.

Other ideas..
There are always more interesting ways to hack and extend Scratch or Scratch-like concepts than we have time to explore. For example - wouldn't it be great to be able to create interactive worlds in minecraft using Scratch-like blocks? If you want to try something like this - please go for it! Ping us through the contact us page now and again to let us see what you've created.

Scratch On!

p.s. Thanks to all of you who helped test during the beta, and who are still helping to find and isolate bugs. We appreciate all the time and energy you've put into helping improve Scratch!

Wow, awesome!

Will the HTML viewer eventually turn into an editor?

Cool! Are there any plans to open-source the website?

jvvg wrote:

Cool! Are there any plans to open-source the website?

Not at this time, no.

OrcaCat wrote:

Wow, awesome!

Will the HTML viewer eventually turn into an editor?

Yes, most definitely. It's clear that Flash is being phased out. Using Flash was an intermediate step we had to take because HTML 5 wasn't ready when we started on Scratch 2.0 (in fact, there are still a lot of missing / half implemented features even now - like the lack of a cross browser sound API that we can use to play multiple sounds simultaneously.)

Lightnin wrote:

Using Flash was an intermediate step we had to take

Urgh, it must feel so bad to have to rewrite it all over again…

You Can Always Name the Open Source Editor:
Open
Source
Creations
And
Remixes

So That Way No one can Get confused with regular 2.0 and open source

An HTML5 viewer's gonna be great. Now people will stop complaining that Scratch doesn't work on mobile devices xD

Neat, great! Sounds like an exciting summer.

I'm not sure why you aren't open sourcing the website. I found rmore than a couple of little things I could have fixed for you if I had the source.

Looking forward to Scratch Extensions! Would love to see raw sockets as an addition feature in Scratch. Would be interesting to see what people could create with that!

Magnie wrote:

Looking forward to Scratch Extensions! Would love to see raw sockets as an addition feature in Scratch. Would be interesting to see what people could create with that!

Yep!

With Snap!, tb10 managed to do a lot using just a simple HTTP GET block, which is amazing. I think that's all you really need.

Hardmath123 wrote:

Neat, great! Sounds like an exciting summer.

I'm not sure why you aren't open sourcing the website. I found rmore than a couple of little things I could have fixed for you if I had the source.

Because of some people who made a site based on the Scratch source code that was inappropriate(?) and insulting to many Scratchers.

scimonster wrote:

Hardmath123 wrote:

Neat, great! Sounds like an exciting summer.

I'm not sure why you aren't open sourcing the website. I found rmore than a couple of little things I could have fixed for you if I had the source.

Because of some people who made a site based on the Scratch source code that was inappropriate(?) and insulting to many Scratchers.

Aww…

stickdude123 wrote:

You Can Always Name the Open Source Editor:
Open
Source
Creations
And
Remixes

So That Way No one can Get confused with regular 2.0 and open source

Regular 2.0 will be the open-source.

Cool! Hope there will be 2.0 support for Raspberry Pi, as many Scratchers (including me!) Scratch from their Pi.

CustomEpicness wrote:

Hope there will be 2.0 support for Raspberry Pi

Presumably the HTML 5 version will…

Is/will there be an API to share and modify projects on the site externally? Requiring authentication, of course.

Hardmath123 wrote:

scimonster wrote:

Hardmath123 wrote:

Neat, great! Sounds like an exciting summer.

I'm not sure why you aren't open sourcing the website. I found rmore than a couple of little things I could have fixed for you if I had the source.

Because of some people who made a site based on the Scratch source code that was inappropriate(?) and insulting to many Scratchers.

Aww…

That's part of it. The other reasons are that it's become a rather gigantic hairy app, and the use case for people re-using it isn't as clear.

To run the old site, you needed: Php (with cakephp framework), apache, mysql,memcached, and some bits of java stuff. Setting it up was quite challenging - took a lot of know how.

To run this site, you need: Python, Gunicorn, NginX, Solr, Celery, MySQL, Mongo, Django, a bunch of middleware dependencies, probably a CDN, and about 9 other things I can't remember at the moment. So, it's not clear who would want to / could set that up.

Also, integrating fixes / pull requests from people who aren't familiar with the app is never as easy as it should be. But if you want to contribute stuff, there should be plenty of ways to help out with the HTML 5 player. It may not be very glorious work (since we won't be accepting any new features), but it's important work, because we want projects to play the same (or as close as possible) as they do on the Flash player. So it will be challenging.

blob8108 wrote:

CustomEpicness wrote:

Hope there will be 2.0 support for Raspberry Pi

Presumably the HTML 5 version will…

Yeah, but let's remember - the Raspberry pi is not a very fast / brawny machine. Don't get me wrong - I love ‘em. Mine is currently serving my website from my dining room. It might work for the least laggy of projects, but unless someone figures out how to get the graphics chip on it to do all the work, it won’t be very fast.

Sounds cool, looking forward to checking out how it works!

Will Scratch extensions have to be written in ActionScript?