MicroBlocks NEW Features

Turgut

We are constantly working on improving the MicroBlocks environment, trying to make it more productive and easy to to use.

Here are a few new keyboard + mouse features introduced in the latest PILOT release:

Manipulating blocks with menus + mouse is OK, but sometimes using the keyboard is faster and more efficient.

• Control-drag is the same as "duplicate all"
• Shift-drag is the same as "extract block"
• Control-shift-drag is the same as "duplicate block"
• When you click on a block in the Scripting Area, you will see a trashcan icon appear in the Blocks Palette section of the IDE, This is a reminder for you that deletion of blocks is possible by dragging them to the Blocks Palette area.

• GRAPH window now supports scaling of the y-Axis: When you try to plot values that are exceeding the display limits of the Graph window , you can use the new -- = + icons on the display to scale the graph.

Here are some tips to help you edit your projects more efficiently :

• You can copy and paste your blocks to the clipboard for moving them within the same project, or transferring them between projects. It certainly beats clicking on a script and scrolling the screen up or down till you reach the new location for it.
• Likewise, you can open multiple sessions of MicroBlocks in the browser, load your older projects into one, and copy paste sections of it to the new project - a good way of making use of the previously created functions etc.
• When you are copy / pasting sections of blocks that are referencing various Libraries, you do not have to worry about including them in your new project. MicroBlocks will automatically import all Libraries used by the blocks pasted and take care of defining all variables used.
• Use the -- = + icons on the Scripting Area to make the block display sizes smaller or larger, or return to the standard 100% size with the equal icon.
• When using the save picture of script option to take pictures of your projects, you do not have to constantly change the block sizes in the IDE to the desired picture size. Just use the set exported script scale option on the IDE R-click menu once and leave your block sizes at a suitable editing size. All your pictures will be at the selected size, independent of the display sizes you have set for the IDE.

Enjoy creating projects with MicroBlocks and don't forget to share them with our Community.