Note that Scratch 1 could also be distributed in the browser using the Squeak VM plugin. Except school IT people wouldn't allow students and teachers to install

Note that Scratch 1 could also be distributed in the browser using the Squeak VM plugin. Except school IT people wouldn't allow students and teachers to install that as too dangerous (meaning, they hadn't heard of it) but they would allow the Flash Plugin to be installed. So the rewrite was to solve a political issue rather than a technical one. Sadly, this happened right when some key people decided that Flash was evil, so a second rewrite became necessary.