Blocs 2024 - New Features Suggestions šŸ“¢

Thats what some of the side bar options are now doing, like spacing etc, itā€™s all BS5 stuff. I feel thats a bit muddly though since it was implemented. Because some elements can has say a margin bottom applied (like a heading), but the spacing showing nothing, because its a class that gets added to the element.

So it would be a massive UI redesign, and a lot of work thinking through the UX.

I think Blocs is in a good place already; thereā€™s no need to make revolutionary changes (aside from things like typography setup, icons, CMS, animations, etc :joy:, but it is for Blocs 6 and beyond, not the topic of this thread).

As for learning CSS, Bootstrap, or whatever code there is, whether itā€™s low, medium, or high :joy:, let me explain what I mean with my Google Translate analogy.

Imagine an English-speaking person, who wants to say ā€˜helloā€™ in Spanish. They write ā€˜Helloā€™ in Google Translate, and it gives them the response ā€˜Holaā€™. This person didnā€™t know this word. ā€˜Holaā€™ is like the ā€˜pe-noneā€™ class here. If the user knew that they could just add this class to say hello, wouldnā€™t they just say ā€˜Holaā€™ without using Google Translate?

Now, imagine a person who learned on some forum that to fix the problem they have, they need to set the pointer events to none. They find ā€˜Pointer Eventsā€™ in the UI and select ā€˜Noneā€™ from the dropdown list of options, while Blocs does the adding the pe-none or required css without user knowing about it.

Learning code is good, nobody argues against it, but there would be no point for an app like Blocs, if we just ask the user to learn all of the possible CSS/Bootstrap classes. I want to learn all the possible classes and coding tricks or whatever, and be able to apply them without writing a line of code in Blocs.

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I agree with much of this, but my reason for using Blocs is standard adherence and speedā€”not simplicity. My limited resource is time. I have numerous software interests where the manuals literally are 1000s of pages (Blender, DaVinci Resolve, Swift+SwiftUIā€¦). The win for me using Blocs plus Eldarā€™s ā€˜Minimalistā€™ is that I feel I get a reliable up-to-date solution that I donā€™t need to micro manage.

I keep thinking to myself that pitching Blocs as an ā€œso easy to use, even an idiot can build a webpageā€ is a brain fart. If Blocs does indeed allow ā€œdummies (as it were)ā€ to build websites, youā€™ll end up withā€¦ you guessed it: websites that were built by ā€œdummiesā€. And theyā€™ll look and feel like it, too. Thatā€™s the real problem. I donā€™t think you need to be ā€œpassionate about codeā€ to build a website, but I think that to get a functional, attractive end product it takes WAY more that just having a tool that lets you drag a few modules around and hit publish. Coder, or non coderā€”expect to put in the same about of time and effort, to get to the needed level.

I know you can start with a template and with a few changes upload something that looks like ā€œyourā€ homepage. But to me, thatā€™s more an illusion than anything else and people shouldnā€™t be fooled by it.

I donā€™t intend to be discouraging at all. Itā€™s just that publishing to the internet while keeping all the ducks in a row, takes some skill and effort.

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Css grid manipulation as Webflow does

css grid

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  1. ā€žSubjectā€œ as a formfield would be great.

  2. two-click solution for YouTube iframes (GDPR)
    GitHub - 01-Scripts/2Click-Iframe-Privacy: Einfaches JavaScript um eine 2-Klick-Lƶsung fĆ¼r beliebige per IFrame eingebettete Inhalte zu aktivieren (z.B. Youtube, Google-Maps, Google Calendar etc.) - Kein Framework nƶtig!

  3. A template like this (shorthand storytelling): Zwischen Krimi und Kult

  4. The active link color, which I have stored in the project settings, works on desktop for the main menu but not for the submenu. It is overwritten by the following code in the all.css file:

dropdown-menu .nav-link{
color: rgba(0,0,0,0.6)!important;}

If I delete this after export manually, the active menu item is displayed in the active link color in the submenu, otherwise not.
Is there another solution?

Oh, I like that!!!

https://x.com/learnframer/status/1744992694995407189?s=20

Rich the Weather Guy

Hey, @WeatherguyNH.

I will be right in the eye and you didnā€™t warn me? :thinking: :cyclone: :cloud_with_lightning_and_rain:
Iā€™ll need to build a weather Bric. :grin:

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Jerry:

I think the problem is none of the maps I look at daily really cover your part of the world. I see Peteā€™s and Normā€™s weather every day, but not yours.
Will have to make an effort to keep an eye out.
In the meantime, do not ā€œVentureā€ out into the open sea.

Mau

Forecast Bulletin - Mauritius

WEATHER NEWS FOR MAURITIUS ISSUED AT 1630 HOURS ON FRIDAY 12 JANUARY 2024.

GENERAL SITUATION:

1)The tropical disturbance evolving almost to the north of St Brandon at about 450 km has intensified into a tropical depression. It is moving towards the south west at about 15 km/h and is evolving in a region which is favourable for further intensification.

2)The active clouds associated with the external bands of the system will influence the local weather as from tomorrow afternoon.

FORECAST FOR THE NEXT 24 HOURS:

Rather cloudy tonight with showers mainly over the Eastern half of the island, to the South and over the central plateau. The showers will be temporarily moderate.
The minimum temperature will vary between 20 and 22 degrees Celsius over the central plateau and between 24 and 26 degrees Celsius over the coastal regions.

Showers are still expected tomorrow morning, especially over the northern half of the island and over the central plateau. These showers will become gradually more frequent with thunderstorms during the day.
The maximum temperature will vary between 26 and 28 degrees Celsius over the central plateau and between 30 and 32 degrees Celsius along the coasts.

Wind South-Easterly at 20 km/h, strengthening tomorrow with gusts reaching 50 km/h.

Sea moderate beyond the reefs with South-Westerly swells of the order of 2 metres, becoming gradually rough as from tomorrow.
Ventures in the open seas are not advised as from tomorrow.

Rich the Weather Guy

Please add more styling/ customisation functionality to the ā€˜built inā€™ carousel bric from within the Inspector side panel; including size, colour and positioning of navigation elements (especially position outside of image). I believe navigation colour/ size can be edited with custom classes, but ā€˜direct accessā€™ to this functionality would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

Love to see many more breakpoint preview options in both portrait and landscape mode and some form of update to Solis please.

Youā€™re not special enough @Jerry :joy:

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  • API ability to directly inject values into the bric html
  • API ability to get the current value of a control
  • Code widget at the bloc level - ie let users or devs go crazy with their own layouts
  • Navigate to another websiteā€™s page within the navigation (Use-case: integrating various services within a single site, but without a slow iframe, etc)
  • Bug squashing until you hate me - Iā€™ll be the bad guy & you can blame me for your headaches - as long as all the bugs get fixed, I donā€™t care :crazy_face:
3 Likes

After using Blocs heavily for the last 6 weeks, my requests fall into three bucketsā€¦

1. PKG based documents
Although todayā€™s monolithic plist based one works fine, thereā€™s lots of side issues that popup as a result. The first is that the current file format isnā€™t optimized for anyone using a VCS as the plist document commingles text with blobs of data. Additionally, merge/delta tools wonā€™t open the document files due to this issue. Personally I like to review all the changes before making any commits to make sure thereā€™s nothing awry. Now mind you Blocs isnā€™t and IDE, but catching say a typo or other cosmetic change would be useful before a commit. Additionally by breaking the save file down into a PKG, this would play a bit nicer with various VCSes as the current file is seen in the same respective as a binary file hence no incremental changes or subpath only changes.
2. Asset Manager Based Upon a Finder Folder
Right now the Asset Manager is using embedded assets in the plist document format. Therefore in itā€™s current from, from what I can see, thereā€™s no way to open a Finder folder with all your local assets. Theoretically you could skip #1 above and instead change the Asset Manager to point to a folder instead, but it would be more helpful to keep everything together within a PKG file (e.g. think of the funky edge cases where someone might use a folder on say Dropbox, iCloud Drive, etc.). The root cause for this request is that Iā€™d like to be able to access an actual folder of the images to add or remove assets, and have the Asset Manager automatically pick up the changes. As it stands right now, itā€™s a bit of a PITA to drag-and-drop into the Asset Manager window as it hides itself when Blocs goes into the background. To get this to work I need to start a drag from the Finder, CMD+Tab back to Blocs so that the Asset Manager window reappears, then drop the files. If I had a single folder of assets on my system, Iā€™m sure the + symbol could be my friend, but alas I have a couple of different folders of assets Iā€™m utilizing, hence the heavy Finder workflow here.
3. Internal Crash Reporter
It could be really helpful to get an automatic crash reporter baked into Blocs for the times when things donā€™t necessarily go as planned.

Updated: Includes more info in #2.

I forgot one and although three were requested, Iā€™m going to push the envelope a bit and give you a fourth. :wink:

4. Add Private Key Authentication to Publishing
I would LOVE to use the internal Publish capability within Blocs, but canā€™t as my server uses Private Key authentication instead of passwords. Of course the workaround is to enable password authentication, but this would degrade the security of my server.

  • The ability to work on several projects at the same time and therefore copy and paste from one project to another.
  • The ability to set certain attributes without having to create a class. For example, you can add a frame or a shadow to an object without having to do it in a class, but directly in the sidebar.
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Hear, Hear! @Pat, especially your first bullet as single window mode is quite a pain point today.

Code editor that can show the code behind any selected element. And same for any class. Click and view the code

Edit the code even.

Already available:

Pro tip: duplicate Blocs.app, and youā€™re able to open 2 projects at the same time with each app. Still copy paste between projects is a bit limited.

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@Jannis
Is this clean and bug-free?