Your Turn!
Now it’s your turn. Download this document for a recap of the blocks we covered in this lesson and some hands-on exercises for you to explore.
What You Have Learned in This Lesson
The Snap! Development Environment
You can access the Snap! programming environment in the browser from snap.berkeley.edu -> Run Snap! or you can use the direct link snap.berkeley.edu/run.
Snap! is a blocks-based programming language, which means that you program by dragging and dropping chunks of code – the blocks – together to so-called scripts in the scripting (7) area. You can find the blocks in the palette (5) sorted into different categories (6).
In Snap!, there are 3 different kinds of blocks:
Some of the blocks in Snap! have inputs (also called parameters), which means that you can change the way the block works by changing the values in the input slot (in this case for example the distance the sprite is moving depends on the value in the input slot).
Some of the input slots have a white background, in which you can type your inputs. Some of the input slots have the same color as the block. Here, you can pick from a dropdown menu of input options or drag in other blocks.
Your scripts might trigger reactions of your sprite, the object you program, on the stage (3). The sprite corral gives you an overview of all your sprites and provides features to add more sprites. By default, your sprite looks like an arrow, the so-called turtle.
However, you can create individual looks for your sprite by letting it "wear" a costume.
You can create costumes in Snap! in different ways, e.g. with the Paint Editor which you find in the "Costumes" tab of your sprite. The paint editor provides different tools to draw your costume. Use the paintbrush tool to draw a freeform costume or pick one of the pre-built shapes. Adjust the brush size with the slider and choose your favorite color in the color picker. You can fill your drawn shape with the paint bucket tool. If you don’t like what you have drawn, you can either click "undo" to remove the last action or "clear" to start over.
If you like your project, you can save it in the menu area (1). You can either register for a cloud account or save your projects locally by exporting them as *.xml files to the downloads folder of your browser. Click on "Save as…" when you’re trying to save a project for the first time. Then select either "Computer" or "Cloud" based on whether you want to save your project locally or on the cloud. Give it a name and click on the "OK" button to save or export the project. If you have already saved a project, you can use the "Save" option to either update the version currently stored in the cloud or download the new version of the project based on what you previously did when saving the project.
If you’re trying to load a project, you can click on "Open…" and then again navigate to either the project in the cloud or in your computer’s file browser.
