Blocs 4.3 Beta Build 8

[Norm]

Hey everyone, here is Blocs 4.3 beta build 8. This release contains a range of handy new paste features and some tweaks and improvements.

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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.

Have fun testing!

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Download Blocs 4.3 Beta Build 8

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

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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.

[Norm]

My personal favourite in this new build is the ability to paste urls onto selected words to turn them into links

[Malachiman]

That is very cleaver @Norm

[JDW]

Holy Cow! I just tried that. New Document > New Column > New Paragraph > double-click any word > Paste URL, and magically it wraps it as a Text Link and applies the pasted URL!

This is a fabulous example of how computer software is supposed to work, empowering users with simple, yet amazingly elegant productivity features. Brilliant!

It won’t be enough for me pry my heart from MacOS High Sierra. But I want to laud the new feature from the highest hill (even as I continue to use 4.1.1 for the lone two reasons of the Portuguese UI and blank “hosted” background images upon Preview).

Great work, Norm!

By the way, even though trashing the Portuguese lproj folder enables the English language UI, when I click the Apple menu within Blocs, I still see this:

It’s only in Portuguese within Blocs. It’s English when clicked anywhere else.

[Blocs_User]

@JDW

Portuguese UI

Maybe try this one line in Terminal for English and see if that helps fix it for you.

Norm has since baked that relative described technique into Blocs. But it might help you resolve your language issue as I described in that linked thread also for your macOS High Sierra. No guarantees it will make a difference but it’s worth an attempt and easier than digging through the app package contents.

[JDW]

You’ll have to forgive my not being Terminal-savvy. I get an error when I copy/paste your line there:

iMacJDW:~ jdw$ defaults write com.cazoobi.Blocs-4 AppleLanguages ‘(“en-US”)’

-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `(’

[JDW]

While translating in Localazy today, I noticed these inconsistent spellings:

Color is from the Class Editor and Colour is the right sidebar.

Or was the mixing of the two spellings a deliberate act to please everybody?

[Norm]

Thanks, I’m not sure if it’s been done before (most likely has), the idea just randomly popped into my head the other day when I was about to fall asleep

[Norm]

Color is the spelling used when writing CSS, so I’ve left this intact in the class editor.

[Blocs_User]

It seems the forum is messing up the single and double quotes, try this one.

defaults write com.cazoobi.Blocs-4 AppleLanguages '("en-US")'

If that too does not work then retype them first before using.

[JDW]

Copy/Paste worked this time in the Terminal, and now my menu is back to wonderful, glorious English! Thank you, my friend!

Now if you could please also provide me the appropriate Terminal command to fix “hosted” background images under High Sierra, I shall see to it you receive the Medal of Honor!

[Blocs_User]

@JDW

fix “hosted” background images under High Sierra

Blocs EULA plus jQuery used extensively internally within the app by the developer equals a big - no thanks. Though I’m honestly surprised to hear the “hosted assets” issue that I’ve seen you describe numerous times for High Sierra is broken. Regardless that Blocs is not officially supported on High Sierra given other hosted aspects still work properly within the app to me amounts to a internal flaw of the source in that regard.

Out of curiosity are you specifically sticking with High Sierra due to certain other legacy apps or due to your physical hardware / older mac? Anyway this thread will assuredly be locked soon for a new beta or otherwise. :—)

[JDW]

@Blocs_User

Out of curiosity are you specifically sticking with High Sierra due to certain other legacy apps or due to your physical hardware / older mac?

For many reasons, yes.

[Flashman]

I find it slightly odd that clearing the contents of a paragraph or header always leaves a line break that then has to be selected and deleted manually.

[Bootsie]

You are so right.

[Norm]

how are you clearing it? just manually deleting each character?

[Flashman]

If you select all and delete it happens. It can also happens if you delete one character at a time.

I’ve also seen it in various scenarios like deleting text links, though that seems harder to reproduce with this latest update where links are applied automatically.