Flash is a dying technology. The only place it is well supported is in desktop web browsers; mobile devices have never supported it and never will. And even desktop browsers are going to make it obsolete soon. This is no secret – just search “flash is dying” and see the litany of confirmation:

https://www.bing.com/search?q=flash+is+dying

But unfortunately Scratch is fundamentally built on Flash, and the open source HTML5 Scratch player has been abandoned (almost no commits in the last two years).

My question is simple: what is the Scratch organization's plan to move away from Flash? Right now it seems to me that Scratch's entire community may soon disappear completely, once major desktop browsers stop supporting Flash.

I unfortunately expect the answer to be, “We do not have the resources to rewrite Scratch on HTML5.” I understand this, if the goal is to preserve existing Scratch content.

But the alternative – build an all-new Scratch 3.0, which would *not* be compatible but which could perhaps have tools for porting content, and which would be based on modern WebGL / JavaScript / Blockly technology – would be insanely amazing, and would ensure Scratch's longevity for decades to come.

Is there anyone working on such a project? I am planning to start one myself simply because I can see how urgently it is needed. I will open source it and perhaps it will become useful to the Scratch organization at some point. If anyone else is interested, please contact me. (I am talking about people who would be interested in helping to write the Scratch-like implementation, probably in TypeScript.)

Thanks!
(removed by moderator - please don't share full names or contact information)

First.. generally you shouldn't share your full name on Scratch.

Second.. you might want to check out these links: thisandagain @ #760, thisandagain @ profile, thisandagain @ #994

This is not an official Scratch-owned project, but I couldn't help but put this out there: a project called Whiskers that runs on a technology called Squeak. It is located at whiskers.gwiddle.co.uk, and I am the developer.
As for an official scratch-owned project, I'm afraid that there is no set release date, but in the last month (see @liam48D's comment), there has been a bit of activity concerning a possible release made on a technology other than flash.

NoMod-Programming wrote:

This is not an official Scratch-owned project, but I couldn't help but put this out there: a project called Whiskers that runs on a technology called Squeak. It is located at whiskers.gwiddle.co.uk, and I am the developer.
As for an official scratch-owned project, I'm afraid that there is no set release date, but in the last month (see @liam48D's comment), there has been a bit of activity concerning a possible release made on a technology other than flash.

You beat me to it :P

Well obviously scratch will have to find a way to convert everything from flash into something else and we have plenty of time to do it, also in my opinion if a lot of things run on flash then flash well not die instead it'll stop being worked on that's all, and it won't effect scratch.

I hope that it will soon turn to just using html, css, and javascript.

I think that (Not very likely, but possible)
If Flash dies out all together, Scratch might start taking donations, and then once they have $1,000,000+ they could buy flash… Not very plausible, but it could happen…

gamma270 wrote:

I think that (Not very likely, but possible)
If Flash dies out all together, Scratch might start taking donations, and then once they have $1,000,000+ they could buy flash… Not very plausible, but it could happen…

They are switching right now to javascript and have “partnered” (so far just forked) with Google. Also, they probably couldn't raise that much money, and flash it outdated

Yes, I think some sort of Scratch 3.0 would be the answer, preferably with new features such as widescreen and 60fps (optional) for newer projects.
(“You can't see 60fps, silly.” Mate, it's smoother on the eye. Go on YouTube with a reasonably speedy computer if you don't trust me.)

I don't feel that lack of support for mobile devices is much of an issue though, as most of Scratch's projects would not work well on a touchscreen anyway due to being designed for a mouse and keyboard. There are Android browsers that do support Flash, but they're rare and flaky.

Flash support being removed from browsers is a high possibility though, as Chrome have already stopped supporting Java and switched to Pepper Flash, I think. However, there are still loads of Flash games and whatnot, so no doubt even in that case, Flash could just be downloaded manually or something like in the good old days.

That's pretty much all I have to say other than… why Bing? If you're using Bing, I'm going to assume it's your default search engine… for your default browser… Internet Explorer! Don't worry, Internet Explorer generally lags behind so they'll support Flash until at least 2020, guaranteed, from me. Then again, big companies can be unpredictable so meh.

move it back to java like in 2011

iggykoopa wrote:

move it back to java like in 2011

That isn't much better though

Scratch 3 aka scratch-blocks will be ran of googles blockly

when green flag clicked
if <touching [camck v] ?> then
say [Hello]
broadcast [Say Hello Back v]
end

-Radical- wrote:

NoMod-Programming wrote:

This is not an official Scratch-owned project, but I couldn't help but put this out there: a project called Whiskers that runs on a technology called Squeak. It is located at whiskers.gwiddle.co.uk, and I am the developer.
As for an official scratch-owned project, I'm afraid that there is no set release date, but in the last month (see @liam48D's comment), there has been a bit of activity concerning a possible release made on a technology other than flash.

You beat me to it :P

Scratch 1.4 used Squeak there's also byob, I use that because you can compile to exe files, there's also Snap! made by the makers of byob so yeah snap is html based so that could be the next scratch

when green flag clicked
if <touching [camck v] ?> then
say [Hello]
broadcast [Say Hello Back v]
end

TenHourGuy wrote:

Yes, I think some sort of Scratch 3.0 would be the answer, preferably with new features such as widescreen and 60fps (optional) for newer projects.
(“You can't see 60fps, silly.” Mate, it's smoother on the eye. Go on YouTube with a reasonably speedy computer if you don't trust me.)

I don't feel that lack of support for mobile devices is much of an issue though, as most of Scratch's projects would not work well on a touchscreen anyway due to being designed for a mouse and keyboard. There are Android browsers that do support Flash, but they're rare and flaky.

Flash support being removed from browsers is a high possibility though, as Chrome have already stopped supporting Java and switched to Pepper Flash, I think. However, there are still loads of Flash games and whatnot, so no doubt even in that case, Flash could just be downloaded manually or something like in the good old days.

That's pretty much all I have to say other than… why Bing? If you're using Bing, I'm going to assume it's your default search engine… for your default browser… Internet Explorer! Don't worry, Internet Explorer generally lags behind so they'll support Flash until at least 2020, guaranteed, from me. Then again, big companies can be unpredictable so meh.

IE? microsoft edge is awesome, even with bing, I use google but for some reason I can't change it to google, so that's why I switched back to the nice open source firefox but I used edge for a while

when green flag clicked
if <touching [camck v] ?> then
say [Hello]
broadcast [Say Hello Back v]
end

Firefox and Chrome will both drop support for Flash in a few months.

camck wrote:

TenHourGuy wrote:

Yes, I think some sort of Scratch 3.0 would be the answer, preferably with new features such as widescreen and 60fps (optional) for newer projects.
(“You can't see 60fps, silly.” Mate, it's smoother on the eye. Go on YouTube with a reasonably speedy computer if you don't trust me.)

I don't feel that lack of support for mobile devices is much of an issue though, as most of Scratch's projects would not work well on a touchscreen anyway due to being designed for a mouse and keyboard. There are Android browsers that do support Flash, but they're rare and flaky.

Flash support being removed from browsers is a high possibility though, as Chrome have already stopped supporting Java and switched to Pepper Flash, I think. However, there are still loads of Flash games and whatnot, so no doubt even in that case, Flash could just be downloaded manually or something like in the good old days.

That's pretty much all I have to say other than… why Bing? If you're using Bing, I'm going to assume it's your default search engine… for your default browser… Internet Explorer! Don't worry, Internet Explorer generally lags behind so they'll support Flash until at least 2020, guaranteed, from me. Then again, big companies can be unpredictable so meh.

IE? microsoft edge is awesome, even with bing, I use google but for some reason I can't change it to google, so that's why I switched back to the nice open source firefox but I used edge for a while

IE was a nightmare when I had to make a website –> did you know they added conditionals to html?

We are in discussion with both Google and Mozilla about the upcoming changes to how they support Flash. Neither are "drop support for Flash“ but rather will be changing the default behavior when the Flash plugin is used on a webpage. We expect that this will have minimal disruption for existing Scratchers but will likely add some friction for new Scratchers who are experiencing Scratch for the first time.

A complete rewrite of Scratch in HTML 5 (HTML / CSS / Javascript) is well underway (we call it ”Scratch 3.0") which will resolve this problem over the long term and we expect will deliver a better experience. We expect to start sharing 3.0 in 2017. Stay tuned.

I hope they go HTML/CSS/JavaScript

helloandgoodbye9 wrote:

camck wrote:

TenHourGuy wrote:

Yes, I think some sort of Scratch 3.0 would be the answer, preferably with new features such as widescreen and 60fps (optional) for newer projects.
(“You can't see 60fps, silly.” Mate, it's smoother on the eye. Go on YouTube with a reasonably speedy computer if you don't trust me.)

I don't feel that lack of support for mobile devices is much of an issue though, as most of Scratch's projects would not work well on a touchscreen anyway due to being designed for a mouse and keyboard. There are Android browsers that do support Flash, but they're rare and flaky.

Flash support being removed from browsers is a high possibility though, as Chrome have already stopped supporting Java and switched to Pepper Flash, I think. However, there are still loads of Flash games and whatnot, so no doubt even in that case, Flash could just be downloaded manually or something like in the good old days.

That's pretty much all I have to say other than… why Bing? If you're using Bing, I'm going to assume it's your default search engine… for your default browser… Internet Explorer! Don't worry, Internet Explorer generally lags behind so they'll support Flash until at least 2020, guaranteed, from me. Then again, big companies can be unpredictable so meh.

IE? microsoft edge is awesome, even with bing, I use google but for some reason I can't change it to google, so that's why I switched back to the nice open source firefox but I used edge for a while

IE was a nightmare when I had to make a website –> did you know they added conditionals to html?

Yeah IE Edge

when green flag clicked
if <touching [camck v] ?> then
say [Hello]
broadcast [Say Hello Back v]
end

no me gusto lo que isistes esta orendo lo lamento