A project I've been working on has suddenly become blank.

http://alpha.scratch.mit.edu/projects/10007795/

I've noticed this happening randomly. It seems to resolve itself when the browser cache is refreshed or by closing out of Scratch and reloading. Probably due to updates being pushed on the website. It seems to be happening frequently.

This could become a big issue for younger users since Scratch 2 is completely web-based. Perhaps, if it is not being done already, the Scratch team could specify some cache-control headers to coincide with scheduled patches and releases.

Still not working… it's been a few hours and I've cleared my cache (many times!).

To me, this is the worst error ever. Worse than the disappearing text bug!

We (and by ‘we’ I mean the Scratch Team) really needs to get to the bottom of this error and fix it right away.


One of my projects is blank too: http://alpha.scratch.mit.edu/projects/676153

it really is blank.. i dont see anything. this HAS to be fixed

I also agree. I came here to report a glitch (which I will do in about a minute or two!)

I also see the forum has become a bit more “code-friendly”


Sorry couldn't resist!

Your project still exists, it's just not being loaded in the editor. You may be able to hand-craft an .sb2 and import that to continue working on the project.

BoltBait
To me, this is the worst error ever. Worse than the disappearing text bug!We (and by ‘we’ I mean the Scratch Team) really needs to get to the bottom of this error and fix it right away. One of my projects is blank too: http://alpha.scratch.mit.edu/projects/676153

I can see this project now – perhaps the problem was caused by today's migration. Can you confirm that you can see it now? (A clearing of the cache may be in order… lots of changes today.)

i see it now as well.

Hardmath123
A project I've been working on has suddenly become blank. http://alpha.scratch.mit.edu/projects/10007795/

John tells me he's got a handle on this issue, and is working on a fix. Thanks for reporting!

Hardmath123
A project I've been working on has suddenly become blank.

http://alpha.scratch.mit.edu/projects/10007795/

Hi, Hardmath123.

The project has a badly encoded string involving a backslash (\) character. I can manually fix the project and get back your scripts, but I can't figure out how to reproduce the problem. Do you remember what string you typed? The context is a “=” block comparing a character extracted from one line in a list with “\”. I suppose you simply typed in a backslash?

There are some other bugs that can cause blank projects, which is probably what other people are seeing. The most common involves incomplete uploads. I'm working on a fix for that that will recover as much of the project as possible.

There is another “blank project” bug that only affects people using Safari 5 on Mac OS. This bug results in the project area seeming to be blank – until you move the scrollbar, and then it appears. (But that's not a fix – it continues to have display issues.) If you're using Safari 5 on a Mac, I'd suggest that you temporarily use a different browser. Note that most Mac users are probably using Safari 6, which doesn't have this problem.

– John

EDIT: Your recovered project is here:
http://alpha.scratch.mit.edu/projects/10008256

Thanks, John! I did indeed type in a single backslash, I was using it as an escape character for a parser. I suppose you didn't escape it when JSON-dumping it, so your interpreted reads it as an escaped double-quote and goes crazy.

nXIII
Your project still exists, it's just not being loaded in the editor. You may be able to hand-craft an .sb2 and import that to continue working on the project.

How do you find all these APIs?! I've been looking for that ever since you posted your website API docs on gdocs.

Hardmath123
How do you find all these APIs?! :O I've been looking for that ever since you posted your website API docs on gdocs.

For that one I think I just logged XHRs.

veggieman001
One could also find some things while poking around before.

Yeah, I have a complete list of their urls.py from a while ago.

Oh. I've encountered that. I just went to the project again, and it was back to normal.

happens to me all the time in FF (nightly), but not in chromium

Hardmath123
Thanks, John! I did indeed type in a single backslash, I was using it as an escape character for a parser. I suppose you didn't escape it when JSON-dumping it, so your interpreted reads it as an escaped double-quote and goes crazy.

Yes, that is definitely the symptom. But I've studied the JSON stringify() code and it looks like it covers all the cases for escaping backslash characters. I've also tried to reproduce this problem, but to no avail. Out of about five thousand Scratch 2.0 projects, this is the only one that had a badly escaped backslash. Of course, yours may be the only project that actually uses a backslash character for anything! :-) For a while, it was a complete mystery how your project could have gotten corrupted in that way…

But I finally figured it out. If you leave the project editor abruptly, for example, by closing the tab or navigating away, Scratch tries to save the project one last time so that you don't lose any work. But, due to various browser restrictions, it must go through a different path than usual, one that involves passing the JSON data to JavaScript and thence to the server. In the process, JavaScript is unescaping the backslash (i.e. converting double backslash to single backslash).

So, I'm happy to have that mystery solved.

– John

I worked hard on a project but when the second I reload the page it becomes a blank project which is really upsetting could someone help please?
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/515579945/