Scratch

What operating system are you using? Windows XP? Vista? Mac OS X?

Hi greg_allprojects_ and Smallvile,

Scratch 1.3 needs Windows XP or later to run correctly. If you run Scratch on Windows ME or 98 you will encounter the error message you're describing.

I f you - like myself - absolutely have to run Scratch on Windows ME or 98, there is a way - but it is not at all recommended:

How to run Scratch 1.3 on Windows 98/ME:

1) Download Scratch 1.3. and run the Windows installer.

2) Open the Scratch folder and delete or rename the files
   - Scratch.exe and
   - UnicodePlugin.dll

         (it is really important that you remove the file named UnicodePlugin.dll,
         otherwise everything in Scratch will appear garbled)

3) Download an older Squeak VM that works with Win 98, like VM: 3.4.3
   here's the link: http://www.squeakvm.org/win32/release/Squeak-Win32-3.4.3-VM.zip

4) unzip the archive and copy the file
   - Squeak.exe (only)
   into the Scratch folder and rename it to
   - Scratch.exe

Caution:

This is not the recommended way to run Scratch. Scratch 1.3 will basically work, and you'll be able to share your projects on the website and open downloaded projects with this setup, but there will be lots of bugs (including pink error boxes) and limitations, which do not occur in the official version for Windows XP and later.

Some things that will not work are:

1) the Scratch window title bar
   will not display the current Scratch project

2) accented or non-latin character input
   (translations of the user interface will mostly work, though,
   if they're in a latin character set).

3) the language menu
   you'll only see the names of the pootle files, not the language names.

4) system fonts in the paint editor
   instead you will have the old Scratch fonts only

5) copying out of any text-field
   this will cause a pink error box to appear, press "abandon" if this happens.

6) automatic language setting detection

7) hiding drives and other ini-settings

8) the "Want Help?" button will do nothing
   help for inidivual blocks will work fine, however.

9) probably *lots* of other things I haven't noticed until now.

So, please, be prepared to encounter many bugs and deficiencies if you do have to use this setup.

Having cautioned you about this, good luck!

You can try if the old link still works: http://scratch.mit.edu/files/ScratchInstaller.exe

But you will be running into problems as soon as you want to look at a project created with Scratch 1.3 because these cannot be opened in the old version.

me to.

Just in case you don't know, this thread is 2 years old!