Scratch Secrets and Tips …

                                  Scratch Secrets and Tips
                                                  Original thread:
                              http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=759


From Natalie

Here's a list of tips and shortcuts from the Scratch programming team.

SPRITES
* Find a sprite: To show a sprite that's off the screen or hidden, Shift+click on its thumbnail in the sprite list
(bottom right-corner of screen) - this will bring the sprite to the middle and show it.
- To turn a costume into a separate sprite, right-click (Mac Ctrl+click) and select "turn into a sprite".
- Drag the blue line on sprite thumbnail (in the middle of the screen) to rotate the sprite.
- To rotate a sprite from the stage, shift+click on the sprite.
- Shortcut to get a sprite to "point in direction 90": double-click on sprite thumbnail in the top middle of the
screen.
- To delete a sprite, use the Scissors tool (or Right-click and choose "delete")
- To delete multiple sprites, Shift+click with the Scissors (it won't revert to the arrow)
-To make multiple copies of a sprite, Shift+click with the Copy tool (it won't revert to the arrow)
-Drag to reorder thumbnails in sprite list (bottom right corner of screen)
-Drag to reorder costumes in the Costume tab area
-To make a sprite that looks like part of the background, Right-click (Mac Ctrl+click) the stage to grab a
portion of the image on the stage.

BLOCKS AND SCRIPTS
- To copy a stack of blocks from one sprite to another, drag the stack to the thumbnail of the other sprite (at
the bottom right corner of the screen).
-To clean up the script area, right-click (Mac Ctrl+click) in Scripts area.
-Get help for any block: right-click (Mac Ctrl+click) on the block
- You can fit some blocks within other blocks. For example, you can put any Number or Sensing blocks
with curved edges inside a "switch to costume" block or any block that has a white number or text area.
- Want to get the current x-y of a sprite? Click on the Motion category to update the x-y numbers in the glide
and go-to blocks in the palette.

PAINT EDITOR
- To crop an image, outline it with the Selection tool, then Shift+delete (or Shift+backspace)
- To rotate part of a costume, use the selection tool, then click the left or right Rotate button (curved arrows).
- To rotate more precisely: Shift+click on the left or right Rotate button. It will let you enter a # of degrees to
rotate
- Grow or shrink more precisely: Shift+click on the Grow or Shrink button (arrows pointing out or in). It
will let you enter a % size for a costume
- To stamp multiple times, press Shift while using the Stamp tool.
- Press Shift with the Rectangle tool to make a square.
- Press Shift with the Oval tool to make a circle.
- Press Shift with Line tool to make a straight horizontal or vertical line.
- Press Shift key when clicking on a color square to change the other color.
- To pick up a color from outside the paint editor, select the Eyedropper tool, click in the Paint editor, then
drag while holding down the mouse key.

REPORTERS & VARIABLES
- Check boxes to show monitors on stage
- Click a monitor to toggle between options (hide monitor name, show slider)

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS (some of these are repeats with above)
-To delete multiple sprites, Shift+ click with the Scissors tool (it won't revert to the arrow).
- To make multiple copies of a sprite, Shift+click with Copy tool (it won't revert to the arrow).
- Ctrl+S to save your project.

OTHER
- You can drag multiple images at once into Scratch. They will become costumes within a sprite.
- You can drag in an animated gif.
- You can drag in images from a web browser, Word, and some other programs (on Windows).
- You can drag in a Scratch project from a file folder.

#########################################################

                                              From Other Users

JoeIP: here is a good secret!- Amazing graphics, but they would take too much time! so just make a really
detialed [lets make the example grass] blade of grass. Then press control-A, and the blade would be
selected (make sure that there is no other images on the canvas), and then move it araound, HOLDING on
control-C. Multiple copies of the sprites would be occuring every millisecond! It is good for gatting detailed
textures (to ake them even better, when you have completed the game, press compress grpahics, and set the
quility to 36, and the texture would look even better!).

---
LeBurt: I found another secret. While doing my Pink Jim project (http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/LeBurt/
37530), I noticed that the use of special characters is allowed in variable names. This is way cool for math-
related projects, for you can name variables or constants using:

Greek letters: , , µ, ¶, t, etc.
Unit symbols: ºC, $CDN, etc.
Funky symbols: §, ©, etc.

I don't think Scratch uses the Unicode character set but it's something similar, meaning that you can use
Windows' character table to cut&paste them into Scratch if your keyboard layout doesn't make them
available.

---
JSO: ...if the animated GIF's have a non-transparent background, you cannot see the previous frame. The
background always keeps same rectangle-shape (the size of the animated gif). When it's imported into
scratch you can easily remove the backgrounds. When you import animated GIF's with a transparent
background, you can see all the frames "stamped" on each other because the shape changes... Joren