Blocs 4.3 Beta Build 7

Hey everyone, here is Blocs 4.3 beta build 7. This release contains a range of tweaks and improvements.


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.

have a great weekend and have fun testing! :beers: :raised_hands:


Download Blocs 4.3 Beta Build 7

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.

6 Likes

Have a wonderful weekend Norm. Thank you for your dedication in listening to all our suggestions to make Blocs stand out above the rest.

3 Likes

Took some time to test a Project with this Beta. It looks like the Interactions for Buttons doesn’t always show up.

The b7 UI continues to be haunted by the Poltergeist of Portugal :ghost: on High Sierra, but deleting “pt-PT.lproj” thankfully continues to zap that naughty language back to the netherworld. Alas! My attempts at exorcising the HOSTED background image Spectre :smiling_imp: remains unsuccessful, and my precious Hosted images remain invisible on Preview. Even so, these demons shall not gain the upper hand and scare me from my High Sierra abode anytime soon! :muscle:

Perhaps it’s time to invoke the ultimate incantation…

:zap: Abracadabra :zap:

:crossed_fingers::crossed_fingers::crossed_fingers::crossed_fingers::crossed_fingers::crossed_fingers::crossed_fingers:

Wow…You must really love High Sierra

1 Like

After some further testing, it looks like my entire test project is corrupted from this beta. CSS classes are not updating correctly, can’t change button interactions, Layout Issues show up on certain browser previews, missing images after export, etc.
Not sure if this is just due to Bootstrap 5 conversion or if there’s something going on with this build itself. Haven’t tried other projects but did erase and reinstall both version 4.2.2 and 4.3b7 (leaving the Application Support Folder) and issues persisted.

EDIT: Sorry about to heavy-handed bug reports. Been trying to refresh various projects today.

Could be. The show-stopper bug (invisible hosted background images in Preview) on High Sierra prevents me from using Blocs 4.2 and higher as my daily driver, but I must say that I would probably still not be using BS5 even if that was fixed because any bugs in the “migration” code will be burned into your document. So if there’s a new version of Blocs in the future that fixes those bugs “in migration,” you could never get those bug fixes because your project is already migrated. In other words, until every single migration related bug is found and fixed, there’s a risk you run in upgrading to BS5 and then building new site material on that file. Of course, there might be work-arounds for migration related bugs, but I can’t really say what those would be, even if they do exist.

Well, that kinda sucks. I didn’t care much about this project since it was a duplicate but I already started a client website with BS5 in v4.2.0. Probably just going to quit while I’m ahead until Norm pushes more fixes.

The problem with “fixes” though is that if we don’t report specific steps, Norm can’t fix the bugs. That’s why even though High Sierra isn’t officially supported, I keep reporting the same show-stopper bugs because, in my humble opinion, whatever causes them might actually be something that shouldn’t be in Blocs in the first place, even though it doesn’t present itself in later versions of MacOS. I think of these bugs as cancer. Just because some users of more recent OS versions can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t cancer.

Now regarding BS5, is there any feature specific to BS5 that you really need, or is it just your desire to “stay current” version wise?

It was mostly to stay current, however, it’s definitely not a necessity feature-wise. I haven’t made use of the new framework changes yet. I would just have to dedicate a day to recreate my clients’ project with BS4.
I’ll continue my testing with my portfolio copy sites and to see how to reproduce the bugs specifically within that project.

1 Like