Solving bad bugs is like solving a mystery: you have to gather clues, imagine how the glitch might happen, and then test your theories.

Recently we were up against a really bad glitch: a small percentage of projects were getting saved in an empty or blank state. The loss rate was only 0.0004% of all project saves - but that's still too high. We never want to lose Scratcher's work: it's super important that Scratchers feel confident that their work won't get lost. So fixing this problem became our highest priority.

But the comments and forum posts we were seeing about this glitch were really hazy - just people saying that all their work disappeared suddenly, for no clear reason. Vague info about glitches is better than no info about glitches, but it doesn't help us get the most important job done: making the problem happen here, where we can step through the code and see exactly what causes the error. Only then can we fix it!

Every report we'd get, we'd restore the projects (so the creators didn't lose any of their work permanently). But that didn't help us understand what led to the projects being lost in the first place. That is, until ZedProduction gave us a key bit of information:

ZedProduction wrote:

Details: I started up the project, and it began the load. I clicked on customs, witch I think was the problem, and the project suddenly opened without anything in it, just a blank shell. I was shocked, and tried to reload the page, but before I could, it auto-saved. I then posted this on the forums.

That gave us a very helpful clue - that at least one of the projects was lost when the creator clicked on the costumes tab before the project was finished loading. We guessed that that might trigger a save before the project was completely loaded - resulting in an empty project. So scmb1 tested that theory out on her test account, and was able to cause one of her test projects to go blank - w00t! That was cause for celebration.

Once we can consistently make a glitch happen on our own computers, it's only a matter of time before we can fix it. Johnm worked through the weekend on the code, we tested it out on Monday, and then we released it this morning. So from around 11 a.m. today onward, it should be much less likely that a project “blanks out.”

This particular story may not be over - there may be other causes for projects getting saved in a “blank” state. But we're pretty confident that we've eliminated one of the causes for that problem (and maybe all of the causes - we hope!). If you (or any Scratcher you know!) see one of your projects suddenly go blank, we want to know about it! In most cases we can restore it. Any additional info you can provide - like what you did before it happened, a link to the project, your browser, operating system, and anything else you think could be helpful - may give us the clues we need to solve the mystery.

Scratch On!
(And thanks again to ZedProduction!)

First post! Also, I really enjoyed reading that! Now Scratchers know how bugs are fixed!

Thank you ZedProductions! I'm glad that this glitch soon will be fixed, and the mystery behind glitches has been revealed!

Yay!

Thanks Zed!
This has happened to me before,when I was remixing an add-yourself project,it randomly went blank.

Detective work.

Wow, I love stories like this — it makes code ninjas look so much cooler than most people consider them to be!

Sidenote: Anyone read this great article on investigating a really annoying JS bug?

Neat story! It'd be cool if this was in project form, too.

Nice that it got fixed! It is a nice story.

technoboy10 wrote:

Neat story! It'd be cool if this was in project form, too.

I had the same thought! Would you (or anyone?) like to make it into a project? That'd be awesome.

Lightnin wrote:

technoboy10 wrote:

Neat story! It'd be cool if this was in project form, too.

I had the same thought! Would you (or anyone?) like to make it into a project? That'd be awesome.

Sorry, I'm really busy ATM, otherwise I totally would.

Lightnin wrote:

technoboy10 wrote:

Neat story! It'd be cool if this was in project form, too.

I had the same thought! Would you (or anyone?) like to make it into a project? That'd be awesome.

I'll do it!
EDIT: Here it is! It's 1S1S, too!

If you click the flag before it loads it goes blank. It doesn't save blank if you test it in Project Page, which is where I incountered this glitch.

Nice one. Now I know how hard it is for you to fix bugs. So you guys not fixing my stamping glitch is probably you guys working on it! But here's a more accurate description of what happens:

1. You make a picture or text or anything in the paint editor.
2. You make the sprite stamp itself onto the stage.
3. When it stamps itself, it always stamps as if you're viewing not in fullscreen; a smaller resolution. So when you view it in fullscreen, it is very blurry and pixelated.

Does that help? Also, you should add an option to upload pics into the vector editor instead of always bitmap.

-Skalled Exhelah Phoenix.

Now we have a better understanding of how the Scratch Team works!

For some reason on my browser, the duplicate, delete, stuff you usually get by right-clicking on a block are extremely offset so i have to click somewhere in the middle of the screen to actually make it work. BTW, I'm using mozilla firefox.

Yay! One of my projects from 1.4 had blank scripts,so I couldn't see what was in them, when 2.0 came out and you transferred all my work.

I had to delete it all. And I didn't even hit the costume button.

Maybe you could add a restore option? To restore saved work if stuff gets haywire in the project system?

I thank you for taking the time to read this.

-Joespray

Also- request:

Could you add onion skins to Scratch? It's hard to animate when you cannot see the last frame/costume.

I find it fun to pour through the code and fix any glitches. (Especially when my co-developer can't fix it ) It's not only useful in the fact you obviously get rid of the glitch, but you also learn to scan through for any particular things that could be causing a glitch, and you also get more practice being a programmer!

nice story! now i know why some of my projects are blank!

I was making a Scratch project… and now I can't find the glitch.