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
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 .
Localisation
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
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
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
Right click the preview button to quickly preview your site in any installed browser.
Visual Impairment Filters
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
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
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.