Ocular and Aviate.
Two websites that do the same thing. Statuses. Basically, just text strings that are tied to your Scratch account and can be displayed on various websites via their API.
They may seem the same, but they are very different.
Let’s get into it.
Ocular was spun off Jeffalo Post Viewer by, well, Jeffalo sometime in 2020 as a searching tool for the Scratch forums. It’s handy if you need to look up duplicates, past answers, or get someone’s forum posts to view their track record.
In October 2020, My-Ocular was released, which introduced the custom color and status features to the website. In 2021, it was merged with regular Ocular.
After signing in to Ocular, you are given the ability to react to posts, star them, and access the dashboard, where you can set your custom color and status.
Aviate officially launched in April 2022, so it’s not that old. It’s exclusively a status website, no extra features here.
Now, let’s get into the differences.
Aviate has more versatile statuses, allowing you to fetch statistics like your post count or followers from your Scratch account or even do simple math through dynamic components. Ocular also has components, except they aren’t as powerful as Aviate’s, all they let you do is either insert a randomly-selected joke or how many Ocular users there are, and that’s it.
However, Aviate’s adoption is small in comparison to Ocular’s.
For example, Postpercent displays Ocular statuses on user statistic pages and a certain browser extension has an Ocular integration addon that shows statuses on Scratch user profiles and forum posts. If you want to see all of the websites that show statuses from Ocular, then check out its usage gallery.
Aviate was rejected from being added to the same browser extension because, well, they already had Ocular integration. Not very many websites display Aviate statuses, and that’s a shame, since the dynamic components let you create some really cool things. Heck, even the creator of Ocular stated that he liked the concept.
So, which one is better? I’ll let you decide.
Fun fact: The “Current Status” thingy on this very website’s home page is powered by Aviate!