PatternBlocks3 Changes
(beta test May 2009)

• Resize! - resizes, up to full screen, or very small for social websites.
• Backgrounds! - Over 300 background textures to choose from, plus the color tint overlay to customize each of them.
• Better email! - Email includes snapshot and edit-design link.
• Snapshots! - Save a picture file (png) of your design.
• New Keys! - New key shortcuts include:
  • Arrow fine adjust moves
  • Zoom and center keys
  • Duplicate
  • Move-to-back
  See help topic Keys for details.
• Faster! - Lots more shapes without slowing down.

What's Next?

• Community! - I hope to make a community version of PatternBlocks soon. Then we can see each other's pictures, and vote on them, etc. This site could have other math and art toys, too! All in a kid-safe environment, where everyone's a winner.
• Fancy shapes! - Paint with textures, 3-d effects, to make prettier shapes. Set edge thickness, too.
• More shapes! - Add right triangle - pentagon-section - circle - line segment geometries, in an Advanced mode. But never fear - classic 6-shape Pattern Blocks will always be the default mode.
• Group edits! - Group shapes for move, copy, and rotate.
• Skins! - Choice of skins for the PatternBlocks border.
• Tangrams! - Tangram-type puzzles, with a target outline and the pieces to fit into it.

History

• I wrote the original Java ShapeGame for my daughter when she was in kindergarten, in 1998. She's in high school now! (2009) Playing with pattern blocks, and computer games, were just about her favorite things back then.
• The first Flash rewrite (as PatternBlocks) was in 2004, but only went public in 2007. It had fancier features than the original ShapeGame, including the ability to email your creations to your friends, but lost the ability to resize the screen. Also, Flash worked better with more web browsers than Java applets, by 2004.
• The latest version, PatternBlocks3, is written in Flex3 and also runs in the Flash player. Aside from new features and being resizeable, it provides a better programming foundation for new features.