BuzzedOut wrote:

The reason that 3.0 came out was because Flash Player (which scratch used at the time) was being deleted, and they needed something to replace it (and the website was due for a visual redesign). Seeing as there’s no reason for scratch to make 4.0 (and 3.0 isn’t even finished yet) it probably won’t come out for years.

SavetheAtlantic wrote:

Scratch 3.0 was not made for the end of Flash.
Scratch 3.0 was not made for the end of Flash.
Scratch 3.0 was not made for the end of Flash.

This misconception needs to be dead and buried and yet it still gets perpetuated by people who wish to help (more or less) but can't be bothered to find out whether what they're saying is true and just parrot what others say.

First, the discrepancy in the timeline. Adobe announced Flash's EOL on July 25, 2017. This was not a surprise; Adobe ended development and requested developers to switch to HTML5… six years prior in 2011. The writing was already on the wall for over half a decade, before 2.0 even released, so why wait for so long to switch to a more robust system?

Perhaps, however, the Scratch Team decided to wait Until Flash was truly dead and for Adobe to announce the EOL? This assumption is also wrong. Scratch 3.0 entered development in 2016, a full year before. Could Scratch forsee that Flash was obsolete? Perhaps, but why then didn't they scrap the Flash version of 2.0 before, since it was even encouraged by Adobe themselves to switch to HTML5?

Thirdly, if Scratch 3.0 was just supposed to be a contingency plan for when Flash truly kicked the bucket, why wait until the last minute, years after 2.0 released? Why bother spending years of development time adding new blocks, new features, essentially overhauling every facet of the site and editor, causing 3.0's release to be two years after the EOL announcement, and two years before the termination? Why go through all of the effort of making a third version instead of a simple conversion of 2.0?

With that mind, it is beyond obvious that 3.0 was always meant to be a next version with new features, that just so happened to use Javascript and HTML5. Likewise, 2.0's development started with Flash because, despite all of its issues, it was ubiquitous and make online editing and playing of projects near-universal. It was just too late to cancel.

With that in mind, Scratch's updates have always been updates first and foremost. New features were always added in each one, something that would not happen under a last-minute platform change. It is unreasonable to assume that Scratch 3.0 will be the final version forever, and that 4.0 simply cannot be made using the same technology. After all, it has happened before with the minor updates between 1.0 and 1.4. Similar to how each major update being seven years apart has been a coincidence, so too has the platform beneath it all changing.

With that all in mind, it is highly likely, if not near certain, that there will be a new version of Scratch. I do not know when; it may be announced tomorrow, five years, or ten years from now, but I am very confident that it will. Scratch is not perfect – far from it as the Suggestions forum will love to point out – so why not improve and innovate? There have been six major updates in Scratch's history, is it unreasonable to assume there will be a seventh?

Za-Chary wrote:

BuzzedOut wrote:

The reason that 3.0 came out was because Flash Player (which scratch used at the time) was being deleted, and they needed something to replace it (and the website was due for a visual redesign). Seeing as there’s no reason for scratch to make 4.0 (and 3.0 isn’t even finished yet) it probably won’t come out for years.

There's a pretty good quote from a forum legend that refutes this claim and is also relevant to the OP's question.

ARandomNumberIs7482 wrote:

June 31st.

Crispydogs101 wrote:

ARandomNumberIs7482 wrote:

June 31st.

It's actually February 30th

cookieclickerer33 wrote:

(#9)
When html5 stops being supported

SaveTheAtlantic wrote:

(quoted in #5 on this topic)
With that in mind, Scratch's updates have always been updates first and foremost. New features were always added in each one, something that would not happen under a last-minute platform change. It is unreasonable to assume that Scratch 3.0 will be the final version forever, and that 4.0 simply cannot be made using the same technology. After all, it has happened before with the minor updates between 1.0 and 1.4. Similar to how each major update being seven years apart has been a coincidence, so too has the platform beneath it all changing.