GP Beta Test Forum

When I'm trying something new in GP, I sometimes duplicate a big stack of blocks, then start making a changes (e.g., dragging variables around). I like the feature where dragging a new variable block over an old variable in the slot, the old variable block pops out. But then I have a bunch of old variable blocks lying around.

Right-click and delete on each block to clean up takes a while (Fitts-law issues of right-clicking then finding the menu option). I'd appreciate a trash can or some other way to "throw away" blocks easily. (It's be great to be able to click on the background to lasso several blocks at once, but I can imagine that multiple-block selections might make the semantics of right-click menu a bit more complex.)

You can quickly delete blocks or stacks by dragging them into the blocks palette.

This isn't obvious, but feels natural once you've seen it. It's like putting your
toys back in the toybox. This feature was invented in the LogoBlocks system
for the red-dot Cricket (circa 1995). That system had a trash can but someone
noticed that some users were trying to drag blocks back into the palette to throw
them away, so they make that work as an alternate way to delete blocks.

Early versions of Scratch had a trash can, but since everyone was using
the palette area as a giant trash can for blocks, we got rid of the trash can.

That totally works -- thanks! I hadn't thought of that metaphor (putting away your toys) but works well now that I see it.

Multi-selection would still be great to have though! If only to delete several scripts at once, or copy them around classes.