Scratch
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#1 2007-03-21 08:54:31
800x600 screen resolution trouble on Windows
First, thanks! Scratch is awesome. I've implemented free compilers and interpreters and I understand how much work is involved, let alone the effort in the GUI. I read about Scratch on Lambda the Ultimate and plan to start my 7 year old son on it (was playing with Logo).
I have Scratch running on Mac OS X, WinXP and my son's little old Win98 laptop (!). It runs fine on all, except for a problem on the Win98 laptop whose top resolution is 800x600. The rightmost 3rd or so of the Scratch application view is cut off so that if I want to see the whole Stage when running a script, I have to use presentation view. Would it be possible for you to do one of the following?
1. Scale the Scratch view to fit the window containing it?
2. Provide a horizontal scroll-bar in the window so that the missing view can be accessed?
I think 1. would be preferable by I could work with 2.
I'd also like to recommend the use of Scratch at my son's school which also has fairly old machines, so it would be great if this problem can be addressed.
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
David Benn
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#2 2007-03-22 22:20:53
Re: 800x600 screen resolution trouble on Windows
Hi, David.
Re: Scale the Scratch view to fit the window containing it?
I wish that were easy, but it's extremely difficult. At one point, Scratch did work (just barely) on an 800x600 screen. But when we redesigned the UI, we decided that the world was moving to larger displays and we committed to that path. So, unfortunately, that makes things difficult for those with older computers. (I have an old Thinkpad with that size display, so I know.) The good news is that external LCD displays have become relatively cheap so you may be able to buy your way out of this problem for a few hundred dollars.
Unfortunately, if your son's school has older computers with small displays Scratch may not be usable there. That would be a shame. (Let me know what you find out about those computers; I'd like to know how widespread this problem is.)
We'll consider the horizontal slider idea. But even if that gets implemented, it won't be short term. Meanwhile, couldn't you just slide the entire Scratch window back and forth by dragging on the title bar? (I haven't tried it so it might not work.)
-- John
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#3 2007-03-23 07:38:36
Re: 800x600 screen resolution trouble on Windows
Hi John
I understand where you're coming from witht this.
I just tried dragging the Scratch window inside the normal OS window under Mac OS X but that didn't work. I'll try on the old laptop and let you know.
I notice that when you enlarge the outer window, the Scratch inner window scales up, but only scales back down to some minimum size.
Rgds,
David
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#4 2007-03-23 21:31:02
Re: 800x600 screen resolution trouble on Windows
Hi, David. It sounds like moving the window won't work because Scratch won't make the window be larger than the screen. You'd need to make the Scratch window about 1000 pixels wide for this to work. Could you drag the bottom right corner for the window to make it wider?
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#5 2007-06-29 10:47:47
- fab_programmer123
- Scratcher
- Registered: 2007-04-21
- Posts: 27
Re: 800x600 screen resolution trouble on Windows
I found a way to make Scratch show the entire user interface on an 800*600 screen. This is the method for Windows. First, right click on the desktop and click properties. A window will pop up with the display settings. Click on the settings tab, and you should see a slider somewhere in the window. Slide the slider from 800*600 to 1024*768 and click OK. Your screen will adjust and when it does, you will notice that some of the screen is not used, but replaced with black. Everything will shrink a bit, but Scratch shows the entire window when it is opened. Open scratch and you will notice that you can see all of Scratch. Hope this works for you!
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#6 2008-02-26 12:47:18
Re: 800x600 screen resolution trouble on Windows
If you're willing and able to do a little Squeak hacking, I've just posted a tiny patch letting you scroll the Scratch-window both horizontally and vertically whenever it becomes smaller to otherwise display all of its elements:
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Jens/107460
Jens Mönig
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#7 2008-02-26 13:09:29
Re: 800x600 screen resolution trouble on Windows
Fab_programmer123 - older computers don't have the possibility to change that to an higher reslolution then 800x600.
Maybe it would be good to change the size of all objects in scratch when the resolution is too low, so that it does works on smaller displays, only all buttons and text fields etc. will be smaller too...
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#8 2008-03-21 18:18:03
Re: 800x600 screen resolution trouble on Windows
I have the oposite problem. I've got a Sync Master 2032mw monitor which only really looks good if the computer's resolution is set to 1680 by 1050 pixles, which means when I open scratch, if I put it on maximise the script bar grows and the sprit bar and viewing window shrink and it just looks strange!!! That means that if I want scratch to look normal if have to have it in the miidle of the screen. It would also be cool to change the size of the seperate sections within the scratch softwareto costumize the size of your work space.
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#9 2008-09-29 10:41:53
Re: 800x600 screen resolution trouble on Windows
Has there been any progress on this issue? I have a similar issue, though it's not caused by having an older pc. Rather, I bought one of those new "netbooks" figuring it'd be the perfect size for school. However, the resolution on most new netbooks maxes out at 1024x600 and so the Scratch looks horrible. Some scrolling bars would be very useful.
Also, Jens, if you're still keeping a look out, does your patch work for Scratch version 1.3? I'm willing to try your patch, but I'm a complete newb and so I'd rather not drive myself nuts if it doesn't even work.
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#12 2008-09-30 01:28:56
Re: 800x600 screen resolution trouble on Windows
mercado79,
please be careful with Chirp, because it is mainly something experimental which adds very little useful functionality to Scratch while probably introducing some bugs, and currently supports only Scratch v.1.2.1. Therefore I'd suggest using the official Scratch 1.3. release in class, because it has lists, unicode and other improvements. I'll let you know when something new for small displays comes out.
Jens Mönig
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#14 2009-03-03 11:15:38
Re: 800x600 screen resolution trouble on Windows
Jens wrote:
Hi mercado79,
I'm planning to update Chirp (which has the scrollbar you're asking for worked in) when the source code for Scratch 1.3 gets officially released. Hang on!
Hi Jens, I just thought to look into this again and saw that the source code has been released for v. 1.3.
http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Source_Code
Do you have any updates as to current progress?
-M
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