Hey folks, not sure if you heard but Blocs 4.3 will begin beta testing next week
Before then I have one more hot fix I want to get into production.
This beta contains various fixes to address scroll to compatibility issues across browsers.
In a nut shell since we have moved the blocs.js functionality over to vanilla JS some issues have cropped up that stop the scroll to interaction working correctly on some browsers, sometimes
I’ve opted to move over to the vanilla scrollTo which now supports smooth animation via scroll-behavior, however Safari doesn’t support it yet, so I’ve had to add a polyfill to address that.
Working well on Android but still seems to need two clicks on the scroll button before working on an iPhone with Safari. I will try again later just to confirm.
I found it worked fine on iOS. Remember after scrolling on iOS the first click will enable the top and bottom native nav bars as they are hidden on iOS safari when scrolling a page.
If I scroll to the bottom of the page and then click the scroll up button it then requires a second click to react. It seems like odd OS behaviour if you are used to Android.
No problem at all on desktop, though I shall try on a tablet.
We can select svg images for logos and they appear on the site, however they are not properly represented in project settings or in the side panel. It’s basically a cosmetic glitch.
I found a bug in 4.2.1 pertaining to Hosted assets which I have privately reported to Norm. He could not confirm the bug, but he didn’t use MacOS High Sierra either. I can confirm the bug does NOT exist on 4.1.1 when using MacOS High Sierra. For a test, I booted into Catalina from an external USB drive and confirmed the bug does NOT exist, which indicates it must be exclusive to High Sierra and possibly Mojave too. I didn’t test Mojave.
What I would like to ask of you, my fellow Beta Testers, is to test the following steps on High Sierra and/or Mojave to see if you have the same problem:
New document in 4.2.2b1.
Create a new Column.
With that Bloc selected, click Image in the right sidebar to add a background image.
Click + in the Asset Manager and choose Add Hosted Asset.
Click on the graphic to apply it. You should then see it appear on the Canvas.
Now add a paragraph so that you have at least some content in that Bloc to display when you Preview.
Preview (in Blocs or browser) and note that the background image doesn’t appear! That is the bug.
Now download that graphic, remove the Hosted background image and use that same image as a Local background image, then Preview and you will see it displays fine! This proves the bug pertains to “Hosted” background images only.
Uploading the files to the web doesn’t solve the problem either.
No replies to my previous appeal. Okay, let’s try again…
Would anyone be able to test the steps I mentioned under Mojave? Mojave is officially supported by Blocs so if it is confirmed to occur under Mojave, it could then qualify for an official fix.
Thank you for your kind assistance with beta testing!
Pete, the answer is “everyone who loves 32-bit apps as much as I do still use that or High Sierra.” Furthermore, I still find Catalina buggy. I upgraded my daughter’s 2017 edition MacBook Air (the last great Air due to MagSafe and the SD card slot and lovely keyboard) from High Sierra to Catalina, and now she’s having various problems that are eating up my free time to solve. I had hoped she would find Catalina acceptable because she uses far fewer apps than I do, but alas, it’s not the case. I could have upgraded her to Big Sur, but I wanted to test the waters with Catalina first, especially because Catalina offers better performance than Big Sur on older hardware.
I then upgraded my son’s 2017 MBA to Catalina, after having made a CCC clone, and he absolutely hated it because most of his games wouldn’t work. The only thing he liked was dark mode, so I downgraded him to Mojave and he seems content after a couple weeks of use.
All said, there are very, VERY, V-E-R-Y good reasons some of use still use less-than-current operating systems. And I assure you that a stubborn mindset and age have NOTHING to do with my decision, as I have been using Macs since the 128K in 1984, and I religious upgraded the OS to the most current on every single OS release until High Sierra. The decision is rooted in logic and practicality. Mojave offers me only dark mode and slightly more buggy behavior than High Sierra. My son seems happy with Mojave, but he doesn’t use all the apps I do. Catalina offers me 32-bit app death, my son hated it, and my daughter is frustrated by crashes she never had under High Sierra. Then there is Big Sur, which is basically a slower version of Catalina (on older Macs).
And there you have it.
Now, if any of you gentlemen could testing on Mojave, I would be eternally grateful!
Found a Canvas issue when Parallax is selected, it stops the canvas scrolling unless you use the scroll bar. De-selecting Parallax allows the mouse to scroll again.
[quote=“Piet, post:5, topic:14371”]
That is very unfortunate! Catalina is one of the worst OS all with a lot of bugs. I would then have to update the computers and bring a sack of new problems into my house that I did not have before. Is it not possible to leave the 4.xx requirement. Mojave isn’t out of date either. Just because Apple is constantly bringing out new OS doesn’t have to keep everyone involved
[/quote] From another post of mine
@Piet
It would appear you are either on High Sierra (like me) or Mojave. In such a case, I would certainly appreciate your time in testing the following bug:
What I would like to ask of you, my fellow Beta Testers, is to test the following steps on High Sierra and/or Mojave to see if you have the same problem:
New document in 4.2.2b1.
Create a new Column.
With that Bloc selected, click Image in the right sidebar to add a background image.
Click + in the Asset Manager and choose Add Hosted Asset.
Click on the graphic to apply it. You should then see it appear on the Canvas.
Now add a paragraph so that you have at least some content in that Bloc to display when you Preview.
Preview (in Blocs or browser) and note that the background image doesn’t appear! That is the bug.
Now download that graphic, remove the Hosted background image and use that same image as a Local background image, then Preview and you will see it displays fine! This proves the bug pertains to “Hosted” background images only.
I am eager to hear from people using Mojave especially, since Blocs officially supports it, and if a Mojave user can confirm the bug, then the bug will get a higher priority fix.
@JDW For security reasons, I am not switching yet because I do not want to run 2 BlocApps in parallel. If something is opened wrong with active pages and then I have to dig out the old versions, that is too unsafe for me, because then I don’t know how to fix it. I’m not a coder. I think I’ll switch in June when there are stable versions for production. It is the designer’s uncertainty about the effects on existing pages that I cannot change on the fly.
