Project Players

"Scratch Players" redirects here. For people who play Scratch, see Scratcher. For the Scratch YouTube player, see Scratch YouTube Video Player.

This page lists many applications and players which can run Scratch projects. Many players have distinct advantages such as speed or browser-compatibility. Each player executes code in a different language, which can cause different players to view projects slightly differently.

Squeak

Main article: Scratch

The Scratch 1.x program operated on Squeak, an object-oriented programming language that is a dialect of Smalltalk. When projects in Scratch 1.x were uploaded online, the Java player would be used instead to view online projects.

Flash Player

Main article: Flash Player

The Flash player was first introduced as a beta on February 22, 2011, and was very buggy at the time. The Flash player began development once the Scratch Team had decided to switch to Adobe Flash for Scratch 2.0 instead of Squeak. On the old Scratch website, the Java player was the default one, and the beta Flash player was only accessible by users at first. The beta flash player stayed in use for almost two years, with random updates often from the Scratch Team to fix bugs. Then, on September 10, 2012, a new version of the Flash player was released, mainly featuring a new design intended for 2.0, such as a new green flag and stop sign. After a month, on October 18, 2012, the Flash player was made default on the website, with the Java player still accessible. Since the official release of Scratch 2.0 up to Scratch 3.0, the Flash player was the only official player. The Scratch 2.0 program runs in the Flash player as well as the project page viewer, unlike in Scratch 1.x.

Java Player

Main article: Java Player

The Java Player is the old player which was used through Scratch 1.4. It was at first the only online player until the Flash player beta was released. Since Scratch 2.0 would run in Adobe Flash, the Scratch Team decided to opt out of having a Java player after Scratch 2.0 was released.

Experimental Viewer

Main article: Experimental Viewer

The Experimental Viewer was a way to edit and play projects online. It was an experiment with online editing, as a precursor to the web-based Scratch 2.0 editor. The experiment concluded around March 2011.

Beta Player

The Beta Player was a testing version of the Flash Player that started development because Adobe Flash removed pixelbender in version 11.8 of Flash Player. The Scratch Team had been working on an alternative to reduce the drastic lag related to graphic effects. Eventually, they released an alpha, an alternative player that ran graphic effects differently, aimed toward reducing lag. It could be accessed here, but it is no longer in use and that link will throw a 404 Error. It could also be accessed by opting into using it in one's account settings, but that feature was also removed. When one had opted in, all project would be viewed in it by default, but the normal player could still have been used if one had not opted in.

HTML5 Player

Main article: HTML5 Player

The Scratch Team has once stated that an HTML5 project viewer is in development, however it wasn't finished. An HTML viewer would allow Scratch to run on almost all devices, because almost all devices execute and can read HTML code. It was planned that it will be used in Scratch 3.0. Currently, there are two other external HTML viewers, which are still in progress of development:

• JsScratch
• sb2.js