Shall We Learn

Once I taught Scratch at a school and had to download Scratch to ALL computers in the lab. It took forever and I am glad that Scratch now provides the Network Installation, a way to install one copy of Scratch on a networked drive so everyone in that network can share that copy. Moreover, via modifying Scratch.ini, one can customize the shared Scratch program.

To install Scratch on a networked drive, such as Z:/, first double click the installer (ScratchInstaller1.4.exe) and select Z:/

Then just install Scratch as usual. When the installation has finish, go to Z:/Scratch. Open Scratch.ini, which you will modify to customize Scratch.

• Where Scratch Projects are Stored
• What drives should be visible
• Change settings for a proxy server
• Default sprite
• Default language
• Default project notes

 

NOTE: These instructions apply to Scratch 1.4

You can customize the Scratch 1.4 installation to suit your specific needs. For example, you may be installing Scratch on a school network and need to control where user Scratch projects are stored, or what drives should be visible. You may need to change settings for a proxy server. Or you may want to change the default sprite, default language, or default project notes.

If you are looking to customize your Scratch installation, first download Scratch and navigate to the /Scratch application folder.  There you will find the file: Scratch.ini .  This is the main files you will modify.

Where to install Scratch

Scratch looks for various files and folders within the Scratch folder. The Scratch folder is the the folder than contains the Scratch application (Scratch.exe or Scratch.app) and Scratch.image file (even if the folder name is different). Some of the folders Scratch looks for in the Scratch folder are the Help, Media, and Projects folders. Scratch keeps its settings in the file Scratch.ini in the Scratch folder.

It's best to keep the Scratch folder structure intact and not rename any of its subfolders.

Shared Drive or MSI Installer

In some networked installations, you may want to install a single copy of Scratch on a networked drive. In other cases, you may want to install Scratch on every machine. In the latter case, the MSI installer available on the download page may help you automate the installation process.

Customizing the default home folder

To specify a default place for Scratch projects, add this line to Scratch.ini file:

Home=Z:\MySchool\Students\Projects\*

This line tells Scratch that user folders are kept in the folder Z:\MySchool\Students\Projects\. Note that the asterisk is replaced by the name of the logged in user. Say if I log on as rudolf, then my projects will be saved to Z:\MySchool\Students\Projects\rudolf

Omit the asterisk if you want all users to share the same folder for their Scratch projects. Therefore, all projects from all users will be saved under Z:\MySchool\Students\Projects\

 

Hiding drives

NOTE: Hiding drives only works on Windows.

In network Windows settings, it is sometimes useful to limit which drives are visible to the user. This can by done by adding a line such as:

VisibleDrives=J:,M:

to the Scratch.ini file. If visible drives are set, users will not be able to see any other drives (including USB drives), and they won't be able to navigate up the file hierarchy to parts of the disk outside of the Scratch folder and their home folder.

Disabling the 'Share' buttons

 

In some cases, you may not want users to share their Scratch projects online at all.

Adding the following line to Scratch.ini will hide the "Share" menu and button:

Share=0

 

Customizing the default sprite

You can replace the default cat sprite with a sprite of your own. You default sprite can include multiple costumes, sounds, and even scripts. To set this up, just create your sprite and export it. (To export, right-click on the sprite and choose "export this sprite."). Then rename it "default.sprite" and place it in the Costumes folder.

Then export this sprite as "default.sprite". Click OK.

Close the project (you don't need to save the project). Restart Scratch. This time you should see the new sprite, instead of the cat, on the stage, as the default sprite.

 

 

 

Customizing the default project notes

Some people have asked for a way to provide some guiding questions or instructions to users when they first edit the notes for a project. Just make a text file with your default notes, save it with UTF8 encoding, name it defaultNotes.txt, and put it into the Scratch folder.

 

 

First create a new file and add some text.

Then save as defaultNotes.txt with UTF-8 Encoding.

 

Copy the defaultNotes.txt file to the Scratch program folder.

 

 

Then restart Scratch. Once Scratch is restarted, go to File->Project Notes…

Then you should see the following text as project notes.

 

If the user does not edit the default notes text then nothing is saved in the project notes. This is to prevent lots of projects with default notes text from appearing on the Scratch website. The user has to change at least one character for the notes to be saved in the project.

For more info, read this original article from Scratch site.

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