I’m so frustrated. I often file bug reports and upload documents to this forum and people constantly tell me that they cannot adequately test because resources are missing. And to manually go out and find all the resources is a silly pain in the buttocks.
Please… I beg you… PLEASE add either a feature that allows us to embed all resources or a new File menu command that allows use to Save Archive, which will basically accomplish the same thing, either embedding resources or finding them all and putting them all in a single folder along with the document. This feature would be a huge time saver for anyone uploading documents either to the forum or to @Norm in the form of a bug report.
Hello @JDW, normally for me to know what are the missing resources, I save as the project. Then change the BLOC file in a new folder, and open it, and he sais what are the missing resources. As the BlocsApp ask me to reconnect the resources.
But yes, it could be god when you save the bloc it asks if we want to save the resources too, or not as you can save a BLOC in the same folder as your resources, and then they will be duplicated.
Imagine a situation where I have a rather large Blocs document with many (dozens) of resources which are linked from all parts of a Mac’s hard drive. That is the basis for my feature request. It’s unreasonable to expect that we should sniff out all those resources and assemble them into a single folder along with the Blocs document each and very time we need to upload the document.
Another reason for this feature request is because SoftPress Freeway has a Save Archive feature which accomplishes this task very nicely, and since I know how much time that has saved me when sharing documents, I want the same thing in Blocs, for myself and for others too.
I always put all my document/assets in one folder for each website. Why would you ever want to search for these all over your hard drive? Good file management local/online keeps you organized and leads to fewer problems down the road.
JDW, I’ve followed your post(s) and I can count at least seven or eight times you reference “In SoftPress Freeway” in a different post. This is Blocs…I’m not sure why you would ever want to leave SoftPress if it does everything so well?
That category of question basically asks, “Why are you not like me?” Seriously. We are all different and have different reasons for doing what we do. Some people have a messy room and others a tidy room. I have a tidy room at home, but I prefer more freedom when it comes to linking Resources in Blocs. Had someone asked that question to SoftPress engineers, no Save Archive feature would have ever been added to their Freeway app. I’m glad they added it though.
I’m happy to explain why. Freeway Pro 7 is ideal web design software for sites that are NOT responsive. But for responsive websites, I’ve never been able to figure out who to create them in Freeway. For that reason, I have been dipping my toes in Blocs since version 2.x (testing) but did not find it feature rich enough for me until version 3.x, and I purchased Blocs recently. Making comparisons is only natural. Have you never visited the Affinity forums and seen just how many comparisons are made between Affinity Photo and Photoshop or Affinity Designer and Illustrator? There are many, and I myself have contributed to some of those posts too!
So rather than tell me, “Blocs isn’t Freeway, so it makes little sense to continuously compare them,” perhaps we should be more open-minded about how to make Blocs even better. And what better way to ponder Blocs than to come from another web design app that is much older and in many ways more feature rich?
So my contributions on this site are coming from that standpoint. I can’t help it. I’ve been using Freeway since version 2.x in 1999. And I continue to use Freeway to this day to maintain existing sites built in Freeway. That’s twenty years of continuous use! My remarks about Freeway are as natural as breathing. And @Norm knows that. So far, he has viewed my comments rather positively. And to be sure, I really like Blocs and want to see it exceed for everyone, not just myself.
Lastly, some people think things like “please don’t request such-and-such because that will distract the developer from implementing more important things.” Of course, those “more important things” are typically those things which are important to YOU. But at the end of the day, @Norm is a big boy and can make wise decision on what he wants to implement and what to put away for another day. The worst thing we can do is stop the flow of ideas.
Another reason for my “Save Archive” feature request is because I get asked for single page documents often. @Pealco knows that. It’s much too time consuming to do this manually. I do it only because I have to. I do this right now:
Open my document.
Manually delete all pages except the one needed. And that job takes way too long because I cannot select multiple pages in the left sidebar or use CMD-Delete to quickly delete pages. As my site grows in size, easier deletion of pages becomes more of a concern.
Before deleting the Home page, I open the settings and make the page I want to save the Home page, then I delete the page that was previously the home page.
I then open Asset Manager and find that despite the fact I’ve deleted all those pages in my site except one, all the graphics linked to the now deleted pages are still there! So I need to delete all the unneeded graphics one by one, which takes a lot of time since I cannot select more than one at a time, nor can I use CMD-Delete for speed. And yes, deleting them out is important to avoid errors when somebody later opens my document.
I then use Save As… to save a copy of my document into a new folder.
I then manually find all the link graphics to the page saved in that document and also put them in the folder.
Whew!
All this would be made so much easier with a Save Archive command in the File menu. If that cannot happen, then having a faster means of deleting pages and graphics would help speed my manual labor along.
Seriously. We are all different and have different reasons for doing what we do. Some people have a messy room and others a tidy room. I have a tidy room at home, but I prefer more freedom when it comes to linking Resources in Blocs. Had someone asked that question to SoftPress engineers, no Save Archive feature would have ever been added to their Freeway app. I’m glad they added it though.
It’s much too time consuming to do this manually. I do it only because I have to. I do this right now: