Swift Playgrounds: Exploring the Playground

Hello my name is Douglas Walker. Today we will be exploring our playground. Alright our Swift Playground app is already open and we're using our iPad in landscape view because we have found that we have much more screen space available to us and when we're using VoiceOver, all of our elements are much easier for us to navigate.

Alright. We're currently on our my playground screen. Now if we aren't yet familiar with our my playground screen we might just want to check out our downloading and managing playgrounds video. It does a pretty good job of explaining exactly how our my playground screen here works. Alright we already have our playground downloaded and our VoiceOver cursor just so happens to be on our, learn to code one playground. So how about we go ahead and open our learn to code one playground here and well explore our playground interface.

Yes, so we'll just single finger double tap here.

VoiceOver: Selected, playground documents. Button, learn to code. Learn to code one.

Douglas Walker: Great our learn to code playground is open and we have been placed right in our playground introduction. Now we aren't gonna totally explore our introduction page today but a playground introduction is very typical when first opening a new playground. Now we will briefly discuss some of the elements that we have in our introduction here. We'll find our previous and our next buttons here in the bottom center of our screen for moving us through our introduction here.

We have a playground documents button in the top left corner of our screen and we would activate this if maybe we want to return to our, my playground screen. We also have a table of contents button just to the right of our playground documents button, and we also have a skip introduction button here in the top right hand corner of our screen. You know it really is a good idea to move through our playground introduction so that we have good idea of exactly what is gonna be covered in our playground.

However, today is all about exploring the layout of all the elements within our playground. So we'll just touch our skip introduction button up here in the top right hand corner of our screen, and we'll just touch.

VoiceOver: Skip introduction button.

Douglas Walker: And we'll just single finger double tap here, and we'll just double tap.

VoiceOver: Playground documents button. The world is five columns by five rows. Bite at height zero facing north on column two, row one. The goals are, [jam] at height on column two, row four. To repeat this description, tap outside of the world grid actions available.

Douglas Walker: Great. Our playground is now open and we are ready to begin learning how to code. Remember today is all about exploring all of our playground elements. So let's go ahead and orient ourself to the top of our screen now. So we'll just touch our playground documents button. Here in the top left hand corner of our screen, and we'll just touch.

VoiceOver: Playground documents button.

Douglas Walker: Alright. We're on our my playground documents button here in the top left hand corner of our screen and remember we can simply just activate our playground documents button. If we want to move back to our my playground screen. Okay our screen is kind of split right down the middle into two distinct areas. On the left hand side of our screen, we'll find all of our instructions that will actually teach us how to code.

We'll also find our text field here for entering our code just below our code instructions here and on the right hand side of our screen, we're presented with our puzzle grid and we'll also find our character named Bite, which is kind of cool right. We'll also find our gems, which are kind of like prizes that we'll be able to collect as we move Bite through our puzzle grid here. Okay so that's the basic layout of our screen.

So let's go ahead and take a quick look at where we will find some of our most important elements. Remember we're on our playground documents button. Here in the top left hand corner of our screen, so let's just right flick a few times to check out exactly what we have here. So we'll just right flick. We'll flick.

VoiceOver: Table of contents button.

Douglas Walker: Okay again we have our table of contents. So we know about that so we'll go ahead and right flick here, and well just right flick.

VoiceOver: Previous page button.

Douglas Walker: Yeah this kind of explains itself right. This button of course will take us back to the previous page in our playground. So we'll go ahead and just right flick from here. Right flick.

VoiceOver: Issuing commands heading.

Douglas Walker: Great and here is our heading for our current page. So we know exactly what we're learning right. Alright so let's go ahead and just right flick form here, we'll just rick flick.

VoiceOver: Next page button.

Douglas Walker: Yeah and here is our button for moving to our next page. So that's pretty great and we'll go ahead just right flick from here.

VoiceOver: Add from library button.

Douglas Walker: Alright here is our add from library button and our add from library button allows us to add items like snippets, images and files to our playground and we'll learn more about adding these types of elements after we have been coding for a bit. So we'll continue to just right flick for now and we'll right flick.

VoiceOver: More button.

Douglas Walker: Okay, here is our more button and our more button will give us options like our playground's help documentation and a really useful glossary. We've been given the ability to reset our current page or puzzle here, which I tell you is really great and we even have the ability to record a movie as we code. Now if we right flick again we'll actually be placed within our puzzle grid and we don't want that just yet because we're gonna continue to explore the left side of our screen.

So we'll go ahead and just touch below our content heading here in the top left hand side of our screen and well just touch.

VoiceOver: Instructions. Goal, use swift commands to tell Bite to move and collect a gem.

Douglas Walker: Great and here are all of our coding instructions. Now we could just right flick through all of our instructions to read all of those here and we would then be placed in our edit field for entering our code. However, we'll go ahead and just touch near the bottom of our instructions to find our edit field instead. So we'll go ahead and just touch in our edit field here.

VoiceOver: Code. Tap to enter a code. Text field. Double tap to edit.

Douglas Walker: Yeah and VoiceOver told us that we could just double tap or single finger double tap to begin entering our code, which is super cool for us. Now when we right flick again, we'll actually be placed on our run option tools here in the bottom right edge of our screens. So we'll go ahead and just right flick from here.

VoiceOver: Run options button.

Douglas Walker: Yep and here is our run options button. Now activating our run options will provide us with options of how we want to move through our code. We can choose things like how fast our character moves through our code, we could choose just to step through our code and even step slowly through our code. So our run options here can be pretty handy for us. Okay so we'll just right flick from here.

VoiceOver: Run my code button.

Douglas Walker: Great and here is our run my code button and you've guessed it, we would simply activate our run my code button. Well to run our code, right and we would actually get to see Bite move through our puzzle world and of course he'd try to collect our gem here and that is if we've actually entered in our correct code right. Anyway we'll go ahead and we'll just right flick from here.

VoiceOver: Hint button.

Douglas Walker: Yeah here is our hint button down here in the bottom right hand corner of our screen and if we kind of get stuck while we're coding, well we can get some really helpful hints by simply activating our hint button here. Okay we only have a couple more buttons and to find our next button, we'll simply just touch in the top right hand corner of our screen here.

So we'll go ahead and just touch.

VoiceOver: Sound off button actions available.

Douglas Walker: Yeah and here is our sound button and activating our sound button gives us the ability to toggle on and off both our background music and all of our sound effects if we like. Now this can be super useful because at times it can be kind of difficult to hear VoiceOver if maybe our music and sound effects are all playing at the same time.

Alright we're actually going to left flick from here and now when we left flick, we're gonna be given all of our information about our world grid here and this be quite a bit to absorb. So we'll go ahead and just left flick and check it out and we'll left flick.

VoiceOver: The world is five columns by five rows. Bite at height zero facing north on column two, row one. The goals are [jam] at height on column two, row four. To repeat this description, tap outside of the world grid actions available.

Douglas Walker: Yeah I don't think we're gonna touch outside the world grid and repeat our information right now. Anyway if we begin left flicking again we'll actually start moving through all of the rows and columns here in our puzzle world. So we'll go ahead and just left flick.

VoiceOver: Column four, row four. Block at height zero. Actions available.

Douglas Walker: Alright so here we are and of course our world grid and we'll start moving down this column here as we continue to left flick. So let's just do that a couple of more times here. So we'll just left flick here.

VoiceOver: Colum four-

Douglas Walker: We can just flick on through the grid here if we like.

VoiceOver: Column four, row zero water. Actions available.

Douglas Walker: Yeah and that is pretty great and you know we could just systematically right and left flick all through our puzzle grid here and hey there you go. Actually we do have one more button here and this our goal count button. Now our goal count button is kind of close to where our heading would typically be located here in the top center of our screen. So we'll go ahead and just touch our goal count button and we'll just touch here.

VoiceOver: Goal count. Zero out of one gem collected. Actions available.

Douglas Walker: Yeah and we haven't collected any gems just yet but all of that will soon change once we begin coding in order to move through our world grid here. Alright so that pretty much covers all of the elements in our typical playground screen. So hey, we are ready to begin coding.

Again, my name is Douglas Walker. Take care and I'll see you next time.