Hey everyone, here is the fourth beta of Blocs V5.1. A few improvements here and there and more new functionality with the AI Assistant.
API Key
The AI Assistant in Blocs is powered by ChatGPT so you will need to sign up and get an API key to use it.
Sentence Recognition
You can now give the AI Assistant commands in sentences and it will carry out tasks. It’s worth noting Blocs will try and make sense of your commands locally before handing them to ChatGPT, this saves on credit use and is much faster.
Here are a few to try:
• Add a Bloc with 2 columns above.
• Set background colour green.
• Insert a button.
• Set margin top 30px
Quick Commands
I’ve also added support for a layer of quick commands in the AI Assistant, which are intended for quick automation and navigation while the AI Assistant is in use.
You can get the full list of supported commands here.
To use them you typically type a single word and hit return, thats it.
Important
It’s also worth noting the AI Assistant is classed as Alpha, so this feature may not make it into the official release. Treat the feature as more a toy to mess around with for now.
I’m just playing with this now and trying to understand what is possible. I think the big leap will come when it is able to process multiple joined commands with natural language. I bet you wish Blocs was still English only
I am able to have it add a bloc with 3 columns for example, but in practical terms this is no faster than doing it the old way, so I’m looking forward to a point when it can join multiple actions in one step, so we have something like:
Add a bloc with 3 columns and place a card bric inside each column that includes an image with 2em bottom padding placed above an H4 header and paragraph text. Make sure each column has equal vertical alignment.
Overall though, I think this is important and useful enough to deserve a more prominent position within the interface, so we don’t have to go looking for it under the window menu. I just don’t see AI going away or becoming less common in the apps we are using. This is a wild time for app development and work productivity if we take full advantage.
Hey @Norm
Well, it seems like Blocs is playing a game of “CSS shuffle” in the latest beta. One moment it’s here, the next it’s there, and before you know it, all your CSS is partying in the page header like it’s 1999 and showing as text on top of the page when in preview… Who knew web design could be so spontaneous?
Testing v5.1 for a bit now. Loving the new features and updates. Built a whole cinematography website for a partner using @Eldar’s Minimalist Library, and love the new bric sorting options: arcaneimagery.com
In relation to the Minimalist Library installation process, there were a few things that bugged me that I’d love to see changed in the .1 release relating to plugins if there’s time to allocate to it:
The Minimalist Library has over 850+ .bex files and they all show up in the Extension library. Is there any way to make separate tabs in the extension library for Bric Plugins, Full-Site Templates, and Bloc Templates? I had an update to one of my plugins the other day, and it took so long to scroll through everything slow enough to find the little cloud-download icon. Having all these parts sit in one space feels a little much once installing these sorts of template files.
While installing the Minimalist Library, it took a long time to continuously press (or hold) Enter for all the successful installation pop-ups for the 850+ .bex files. Is there a way for Blocs to interpret that multiple plugins / templates are being installed and show only one popup that says “X number of plugins have been successfully installed”? Side note, I’d also really love this for the font manager as well.
Any way you place all the Cazoobi created templates in their own sorting folder also? While having so many bloc templates installed, the space gets a little cluttered and it would allow to find specific things more easily. For instance, I do a lot of audio work in ProTools and with so many audio plugins installed I love that they have breakdown menus based on Manufacturer as well.
It seems that having all the Minimalist Library installed to my computer caused the bric graphical interface to slow down from time to time. Is the bric GUI dynamically loading the looks for all these brics? I’m on an M1 Max computer, so my assumption was it was chugging through all of the actual builds of these brics. Just wanted to report this. If so, I’d assume a way around it would be allow .bex files to include screen shots that the GUI can pull from instead of building.
As for #4, I was thinking - it would be really nice to have the ability to export screenshots from Blocs to share with clients while designing a page. If there was a way for Blocs to generate a top-to-bottom page screenshot of the website build to share, and even possibly allow you to select the brics to export a screenshot for. I’d personally like this to be able to share with people to get notes and feedback, without the extra noise of commenting on functionality while it’s still being worked on.
It’s great to see that you are already making good use of the Minimalist Library! I will let @Norm handle the other questions, but regarding the second question, you can install all of the files using the Extension Manager, as I demonstrated in the video on BlocsLibrary.com.
This should already be the case. You shouldn’t be getting multiple popups for each Bloc or Fonts either.
The UI is rendered when elements come on screen in the Bloc Bar, this is handled by the OS but the Array objects are obviously larger here to so yeah you’re going to hit a limit on performance eventually. I’ll see if I can optimise this further.
Small annoyance, and it maybe an OS thing, I am not sure. But if you have the code editor window positioned lower on the screen when you preview, coming back to the canvas it moves it up high above the canvas again, and you have to keep relocating the code editor window.
Is having the code editor at the bottom of the canvas window an option maybe? I use it a lot and find its hard to get a good workflow happening. If I am using blocs for a client job, I often do a lot of javascript.
I tried to recreate on a couple projects using 5.1b4 build. Code window seemed to stay put on my system after doing preview. I moved code window into different positions on screen (including lower), then did a preview and back. No change in code window position.
Still having issues with the latest Beta in regard to Layer Tree visibility, still not showing the hero carousel that was causing me issues in 5.08. I’m using an off-canvas plug-in could this be clashing?
Screenshot attached. The carousel should appear underneath ‘Bloc#-navbar-mobile-only’
Yes, I have an external display. I normally run it with laptop display closed. I disconnected external display and reran tests using only laptop display. Still no movement of code edit window position after doing preview and back to canvas numerous times. Also tried in full screen mode.
Maybe Norm can determine cause. Good Luck with getting resolved.
in the latest beta. One moment it’s here, the next it’s there, and before you know it, all your CSS is partying in the page header like it’s 1999 
and showing as text on top of the page when in preview… Who knew web design could be so spontaneous? 
)