In the series of blogs (especially the ones in the ‘Introduction to Computer Science’), I will be using SNAP! to cover the basic concepts of computer science to make it easy for people from all walks of the life to understand them.
Sometimes I will be referring to the regions of SNAP! window by names, so thought it is better to explain them ahead of time.
When you open SNAP! in your browser, this is what it looks like:
Image Source: http://snap.berkeley.edu/SnapManual.pdf
I will explain all the areas briefly here:
Tool Bar: This is the top of the window which contain controls to manage your account. You can create an account, sign in and sign out of it. Save the scripts that you create or share them with other people. This top window also contains controls to start, stop or pause a script (reflected by green, yellow and red buttons to the right)
Palette: This window on the left contains the list of blocks that you can use to create your script and the sprite act on your commands. There are different types of palette represented by different colors. I would recommend you look through all the palette and try to think what they would be intended for. We will cover most of them in the upcoming blog series and I will include the detailed explanation of them as we use them.
Scripting Area: This region is used for creating scripts from the blocks. You can drag-and-drop the blocks from Palette to this region and combine them together to make a script. A script is a list of commands that you specify for the sprite to act on.
Stage: Stage is the region where you see the sprite in action. When you drop blocks in Scripting Area, you will see the results/effects of it on Sprite in Stage area.
Sprite Corral: This area lists the sprites used in a program (yes! There can be more than one sprite in one program) and used to select the active sprite that you want to script on.
