Blocs 4.3 Beta Build 10

Hey everyone, here is Blocs 4.3 beta build 10. This release contains more improvements and fixes. Getting close to official release now.


Blocs Store Integration :shopping_cart:
You can now find store products and install them directly within Blocs. Products show up with normal search terms or use the search term blocs.store to show the 50 most recent products for the category (Brics in Bric Bar, Blocs in Bloc Bar and Page Templates in New Page window). Most 3rd party developers still need to prepare their products for inclusion in in-app search, so some products don’t show yet.

This feature can be disabled in main preferences :innocent:.

Localisation :netherlands: :it: :portugal:
Hallo, Ciao, Olá! Our none native English speaking users will be happy to hear Blocs now speaks Italian, Dutch and Portuguese. You may notice a bad translation, some text cropping or another little interface oddity. Please let me know if you spot something and it’ll be fixed up in no time!

Quick Gallery and Carousel Creation :rocket:
You can now select and drag multiple images from either the Asset manager or the MacOS Finder to quickly create galleries or Carousels.

Drag Text To Canvas :spiral_notepad:
You can now drag text from word processors directly onto the Blocs design canvas to add new text Brics or replace the content of a Bric that is already placed on the page.

Quick Preview :arrow_forward:
Right click the preview button to quickly preview your site in any installed browser.

Visual Impairment Filters :eye:
Blocs now has support for visual impairment filters which you can enable to test your sites for visual impairment accessibility issues.

Show navigation drop downs on hover :computer_mouse:
You can now enable navigation drop downs to auto open when the mouse cursor is over them. (Only works on classic navigation drop downs on mouse/trackpad controlled computers).

Support for Brics within Custom Brics :onion:
The developer API now supports a new html tag (<bric_container></bric_container>) that lets any custom Bric have other Brics placed within it. Just add the above code to a custom Bric and it will gain a new input area that you can add Brics into.

Happy testing!


Download Blocs 4.3 Beta Build 10

Don’t forget to hard reload your browser, if the beta doesn’t show!


Known Issues
There are various known issues with Blocs 4.3 that I plan to address during the text phase, so please be aware I already know about these issues.

Blocs Store Integration
Currently installed custom Blocs may show duplicates when you search the store for Blocs.

Visual Impairment Filters
This feature uses SVG filters to apply the visual impairment filters, unfortunately SVG filters don’t play well with the Safari webkit engine (which the Blocs canvas uses) so you will see lag when you apply a filter and scroll. Disabling the filter back to none will return scroll speed.

I’m hoping Apple fix this soon, so please bare with it.

Support for Brics within Custom Brics
I definitely have a few more grey hairs after implementing this, it’s been a real challenge. It’s still a bit rough in areas and you will very likely see selection issues if you nest Tables within Tables or Custom Brics within custom Brics within Custom Brics.

I’ve tested it a lot in house but I’m still able to break things, so developers please don’t roll out any products that depend on it until it’s rock solid.

8 Likes

since version 8 I can’t see my google fonts under the setting only my local web font shows so for example I can’t change the fonts of the nav or the main text unless I pick the local fonts
but when I go to font manager they are all there.

any thoughts pls

thanks

@Norm
Still no Hosted background image display on Preview, unfortunately, but I do see the code changes you made, as shown below. And as you can see below, the background image is missing from style.css in Blocs 4.3 but present in 4.1.1. I disabled CacheBust for all the tests below.

Blocs 4.1.1

style.css

— — —

Blocs 4.3b9

style.css
image

— — —

Blocs 4.3b10

style.css
image

Yellow highlighted parts show areas that change relative to the Blocs 4.1.1 generated output.

@JDW

44faa3a35f15c4740ad0a956b1af06414825b821_2_690x317

2 Likes

:thinking:

Ok so it looks like the issue is that the background classes are not being included. I’ll dig around and see if I can spot anything.

2 Likes

With this beta Blocs Web Content has been using 100% CPU for several minutes, while doing absolutely nothing and my fans are screaming with the temperature at almost 100C. It’s just sitting there in edit mode and I’ve never seen this before. The moment I quit Blocs it all calmed down.

The only recent action was to delete and add some local fonts to the font manager.

Talking about fonts, I’ve never understood why we need to confirm that a font has been successfully installed by pressing the OK button for a process has already taken place. When adding a font family with several style variations it creates a lot of unnecessary clicking.

https://liubliu.co.uk/_blocs_videos/adding-fonts-4.3.mp4

1 Like

The same applies to installing Custom Brics… @Norm :face_with_monocle:

@Flashman that page your working on is an impressive advertisement for Volt (@Jannis)

4 Likes