Blocs, brics and .... premade html widgets

Wish List
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Hi @Norm ,

As a beginner in webdesign I tried Everwebapp.com first, before I found Blocsapp.com (google was my friend for finding this). Everweb wasn’t that great in responsive designs.

I liked the premade drag and drop HTML widgets very much in Everwebapp. You only need to drag and drop them into your design and configure all the functionality in the sidebar. Very easy for beginners (and experts), without any knowledge of coding. Maybe you can look at the Everwebapp sometime and make Blocsapp (version 3 :blush:) even better.

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I’d love to hear of some examples of the type of objects you would like to see added.

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+1

@MNL , provide a list of the widgets you like that are found in Everweb which Blocs presently does not have and you would like to see added.

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I’d love to hear of some examples of the type of objects you would like to see added.

Collapsible panels.

Necessary javasript is included already. There is missing option in Panel settings of Blocs:

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Hi @Norm and @Blocs_User,

I will reinstall the Everwebapp this week and I will provide some examples of widgets they have to make life more easy :wink:

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Like I promised: What I like about Everwebapp (from now EW).

Inserting images/text/video
EW makes it easy for beginners to make a website. They don’t work with ‘ID’s” and “Classes” (which is also a disadvantage compared to Blocs), but every basic setting of an object is available in the sidebar. I can place a, video, images (shapes) or text on the website and manage the position by simple drag and drop to every place I want (at blocs I need to use margins and padding, but it doesn’t do always what I want to be happen. In EW I can adjust opacity, (color) fill, image fill and so on just from the sidebar. Would be nice if blocs make this happen also this easy.

sidebar images.png279×587 22.9 KB


If you add a shape with a image filling, its also easy to put another shape on it and use opacity to make beautiful effects.



Shapes mask
Another easy thing in EW is the “Mask” option. You can make cut-outs within your website of a image. If a image is to big for the place you want it to have, the image can but cut-out on the size you want it. This is easy if you have for instance a image with a size of 570 x 350 and the size on your website is 450 x 300. Then you can decide to skrink the image or to use the mask option to cut-out a part of it.

Default page settings
In EW this is a easier way to set the basic defaults for the website. Because designers have mixed dark and light backgrounds, it would be easier if you can make basic settings for a dark background and for a light background.
And maybe make a table for this. For example:

Class Text Font Size Color Dark BG Color Light BG

H1 Helvetica 26 #FFFFFF #000000
H2 Helvetica 20 #FFFFFF #000000
… and so on

If someone want to make more finetuning, they can use the class manager blocs already provide.



It would also be easy if a beginner could add the sizes of the header-, dynamic- and footer area at the page defaults. Even the breakpoint settings for a responsive design would be nice to fill in at the default page settings.


page defaults.png278×600 29.1 KB

Parallax
By default parallax isn’t available for tablets and mobile. EW provide a HTML Widget which can have sort of parallax effect working on them. Would be nice if Blocs provide this solution by default, so people without coding knowledge can use this effect.
See this website for the widgets: EverWeb Scrolling Widgets

Like I said before. I am a beginner and don’t know much about coding. So it would be nice if such things are standard build-in in Blocs. I know much people would like this. (On another forum post from me about parallax working on iOS iPad and iPhone, someone reacted - which is a very good thing btw! -, but not that clear I could insert the solution straigt in my web design).

Opening more projects
Its not possible to open two or more projects in Blocs. This way it isn’t possible to make some tests in another project (or to cut and paste things from a template to the main project).

The learning curve for Blocs is higher for me then for EW. I did choose for Blocs, because I think I can make a better website with it (hobby)…. If I found out how. The tutorials found on YouTube and the Blocs Forum helps a lot tho. With EW it is more easy by simply drag, drop, cut and paste. So it would be nice if Blocs can make it more easy for starters as well. I know for sure many things of this post are part of Blocs already, but not easy accessible or without the use of (sub)classes). People with coding knowledge can find their own solution(s) to add in blocs more easy I guess.

I hope you can make Blocs (3?) even better with my forum post. Everyone feel free to add your comments :slight_smile:

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Interesting feedback, thanks for posting back @MNL.

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This is such detailed feedback! Thanks for taking the time to post it. A lot of what you can do in EverWeb you can already do in Blocs but as you mentioned there are extra steps in Blocs. It’s fair to say some of the workflow in Blocs is disjointed ie editing classes, these are areas you will see a big improvement in Blocs 3.

The free movement of objects in EW is great, but this is what effects EWs ability to create quality responsive code. This free movement of objects by hand is something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and searching for a solution. My answer 6 months ago would have been ‘you either have one or the other, you can’t have free movement and keep the code quality’, however, that is no longer the case. But more on that next year :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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@norm[quote=“Norm, post:8, topic:2443”]
It’s fair to say some of the workflow in Blocs is disjointed ie editing classes, these are areas you will see a big improvement in Blocs 3.
[/quote]

Bravo, never stop streamlining or optimizing your thoughts on UI / UX , overall functionality ideals and demands for better solutions.

[quote=“Norm, post:8, topic:2443”]The free movement of objects in EW is great, but this is what effects EWs ability to create quality responsive code. This free movement of objects by hand is something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and searching for a solution. My answer 6 months ago would have been ‘you either have one or the other, you can’t have free movement and keep the code quality’, however, that is no longer the case. But more on that next year.
[/quote]

Gotta say, I am proud of your “Can Do” attitude, and not assuming something is impossible or “can’t” be done. So many people accept failure too quickly and miss opportunities. Sadly many apps and thus users suffer because of this. You even see developers spend time publicly defending why something is not possible instead of “believing” and working to overcome obstacles with solutions. Again Bravo.

The current progression of Blocs and Blocs 3, sounds to be bringing some really nice things.

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As a past user of Freeway and Rapidweaver I can attest to this. When you have excuses and uninspiring updates year after year, you eventually move on. Blocs should be different and I think we are all looking forward to seeing version 3.

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Sadly, some of us developers have to work within constraints - limits on development time and resources and in larger companies developers are often forced to prioritise according to management wishes rather than user demand.

We are all impressed by Norms abilities, but before we blow a trumpet to herald Norms ability to buck this trend of under-fulfilling users wishes, let’s remember that even Norm didn’t manage to fit everything into version 1 of blocs and I’m sure he won’t be fulfilling everyone’s dreams in version 3.

However many good reasons there are to have feature X, there are always a number of real-world factors that may mean that feature X won’t see the light of day in any given release however “essential” feature X is. You can see that in the praise for the features in Everwebapp here - the app has such good features, yet for some reason people are here using blocs.

All apps are a form of compromise and don’t reflect what developers would like to deliver, just what they can deliver given real-world constraints. Oh, and the user isn’t always right.

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Not sure what is wrong with a little positive focused feedback. But if you need, you can climb back up on your soapbox and make a list of all the things you personally feel Blocs lacks or could improve on, we all could no? By all means enlighten us from your perspective in this regard.

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I did choose to buy Blocsapp, because I think I can do much more with this piece of software, then when I would buy Everwebapp (although some things can be made easier to do when using blocs compared to EW. I really hope some will made easier to handle in a future version, without the need of coding. And like @Norm said: There will be big improvement in Blocs 3. :slight_smile:

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[quote=“Blocs_User, post:12, topic:2443”]
Not sure what is wrong with a little positive focused feedback.[/quote]
I don’t see what is wrong with that either, nor did I say there was. My comment was about the generalised comment about developers.

I don’t have one, but I find your tone offensive.

I think Norm is doing just fine and while he has a list, I don’t.

I don’t know what the point of your post was.

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Likewise. At least we can agree on that.

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@Norm I was looking at the other posts in this forum and saw a post of placing text on top of a image. You can see the lots of things you need to do with blocs.
Place text on image

In EW you simple first put a shape (image) on the dynamic area and then you place the text on top by drag and drop a text area. Within 2 seconds all done without using classes, DIV, and so on. Would be so great if Blocs can do the same starting from Blocs 3. See also the example from 3 december.

https://forum.blocsapp.com/uploads/db8018/original/2X/e/e80b58465b19553edb759ede4f30da0b49bc06d4.png

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I Totally agree… it is much smarter, efficient, It takes to long time to create classes for everything.
If we get this function we don´t need special made templates. I would also like to see an old classic built in which I have used since 1997, trigger MOUSE OVER OBJECT

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Yes but is this responsive? Your design needs to look right on more than just a computer screen.

The most important thing is that sites are responsive, the freedom of movement comes in after that. My approach is a compromise that is a step closer, but it’s not going to let you place anything anywhere on the page.

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Was curious so I looked at the app.[quote=“Norm, post:18, topic:2443”]
Yes but is this responsive? The most important thing is that sites are responsive.
[/quote]

Nope, actually the apps workflow is not responsive.

Instead it uses a “mobile redirect” to a required separate mobile designed page. Kind of a convoluted workflow in that regard. True responsive sites replaced the widespread use of (m.)mobile redirects long ago. Plus most search engines no longer like that approach and score higher for purely responsive by comparison.

You have to design and define a separate mobile version of your page.

Talked about here in this video:

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@Blocs_User Yeah I thought so. When it comes to implementing freehand object movement, code quality comes first IMO.

@MNL @Paug Another really cool feature coming to Blocs very soon (like next week) is the developer API (alpha). As a little test I just created a custom image Bric with a text overlay. took me like 15mins. I’ll post it here in the forum in a few hours so you can install it and try it out, I think it should work with 2.5 beta build 3.

Incase you didn’t know, the Dev API will allow pretty much anyone who can write HTML+CSS+JS to create custom Brics for Blocs to address scenarios like this when you don’t want to faff on with classes and just want a reusable nugget of code to reuse in any project. Custom Brics work just like regular ones, you just drop em in and set their values.

Screen Shot 2017-12-07 at 14.24.09.png879×972 55.4 KB

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