Well then you should have open the discussion to Blocs, RW and hand-coding.
MDS
Welcome to the Blocs forum @FlexitarianFixie.
This is my take away from reading your comments.
It seems fair to say that maybe so far you really have not taken the time to get to know the app or the benefits it offers and are only seeing the shortcomings based upon your needs or previous workflow.
So from what you perceive of the app you already want more without really truly knowing its workflow or abilities regarding your stated limited understanding of the app vs your existing requirements from the other app.
Given all those comments, it seems your current app/workflow/investment remains your best option presently even amongst its various flaws or shortcomings which might have brought you here. Until Blocs reaches your expectations for plugins, features, etc., maybe its still needed that you continue using your current app due to your desire, reliance and investment of using add-ons/stacks.
In the meantime simply use each app to their abilities for your project requirements. Keep learning Blocs and the benefits it can offer you - until it further meets your overall requirements as it matures.
Until Blocs becomes further advanced, such topics won’t really yield any definitive conclusions. I’m sure everyone has various hopes and dreams for Blocs, 3rd party development, templates, tutorials, and the entire ecosystem surrounding Blocs. No doubt Blocs current features are what gravitate people towards it, so that speaks favorably towards what it offers already.
But until it matures further such threads will yield similar results. I can recall many other similar discussions have taken place over time by new or existing users. It’s nothing against you, its just the nature of such threads.
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Hi Rob, @FlexitarianFixie
I think it’s good to share views from outside experience, without such views Blocs may not reach higher levels of potential. I’m sure some of those ideas may percolate through to tweaks and additions later down the line. So please continue to use Blocs 
I used RW for around 10 years and whilst it worked and I made it work quite successfully, I much prefer the Blocs software and how it does things out the box. I also prefer this community, so very helpful and norm’s involvement with the community is very impressive.
Please also bear in mind that with so many nationalities using the forum and the common tongue of English, we all have a slightly different tonal approach to the language and sometimes things get misconstrued a little.
Have a great day!
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Having used Mambo and Joomla for a long time I’m very concerned about plugins from other parties. Because most hacks are made by plugins from developers who do not update their piece of work.
Having said that, I’m new here. 
The problem isn’t plugins, it is a system that relies on pluggins to do basic stuff that should have been provided in the first place in the core app, I would argue.
RapidWeaver has been mentioned and that is a good example, that needs the stacks plugin to allow more plugins to do often quite basic stuff. For example, there were many stacks to add FontAwesome icons and consequently multiple versions of different versions can be loaded by outdated “plugins” Blocs already provides a great wealth of the basic stuff and doesn’t require an additional layer such as stacks to allow the plugins to work.
Another example is how useful Photoshop Plugins are and you don’t read constant reports of Photoshop being rubbish because of it’s plugins.
Good plugs built around a clever API are a very good thing IMHO.
The way RW does it is the reason it was not recommended to me. I posted a ‘hello’ message that will explain I’m very new to Blocs (started using Blocs a week ago).
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I have never used Rapid Weaver. I installed a test version about 9 months ago and uninstalled it after 5 minutes. I felt like I was working back in the stone age.
I have used Dreamweaver for years and can code when necessary. I used Muse for 3-4 years, and while I loved the layout freedom, I was often totally p**ed off because some 3rd party add-on ruined the code of another 3rd party add-on. Also the output-code was bloated and didn’t conform to a lot of standards.
I have been using Blocs for about 4 months now. I have been able to tweak things to achieve about 90% some of the things you listed like : local fonts, multiple columns, accordions, mega menus, CSS-grid, cookie managers, etc. Other things I’ve been able to master in the last 4 months: full screen video with a fallback image for mobile (blocs out of the box + my own customizing), same height columns regardless of content, etc. …
And as a graphic designer, I have literally had so much fun customizing and pimping standard bootstrap items like buttons, feature cards, team members, heros, etc.
And I haven’t had so much fun tweaking code in a long time! For me personally, Blocs is just the right combination of Drag n Drop (Brics) and CSS-Code tweaking
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Aloha:
As a longtime RW user that has recently come to Blocs I found this thread very enlightening.
I’m fairly convinced after just a short time with Blocs that in the long run it is going to be a better solution for my needs. While Blocs is very easy to learn there are a lot of little details that are a lot harder to discern. From my perspective one of the main negatives I find with Blocs is documentation. I’m one of those people that likes to read the manual, while there is a lot of very good basic information on how to use Blocs there is not enough deep diving and more importantly examples on how to accomplish some of the less obvious stuff.
It is very apparent that most of this obvious stuff is easy to accomplish in Blocs once you have figured out or been told how to accomplish it. But some of it is not that “discoverable”, which is why for me documentation is critical. I have learnt a huge amount through experimentation but that takes time. There are some interesting looking course from Eldar that certainly look like they will be a huge help in filling some of the holes.
For me the the best way that I have for understanding and learning Blocs is to try an replicate one of the sites I have built in Rapidweaver. So far I have not been able to reproduce these sites, not necessarily due to any limitations in Blocs (it is very capable, more so than RW), but mainly due to the fact that I cannot find out how to do certain things, which can quickly become frustrating.
So my take on the comparison between RW and Blocs is that hands down I’m convinced that Blocs is the future for me. It is way faster, more fluid, more flexible, more powerful, and more complete than RW. But for me the devil is in the details, there are so many small details that I just am unable to discover and this is a little frustrating.
I’m sure this wonderful forum will become a useful resource but you might get very tired of all the questions I would be asking. I have asked a couple already and still awaiting some answers. For me the learning process is severely hampered if I have to rely on a forum for information as sometimes it can take a long time for an adequate reply show up. I’m not that patient as I what to make progress so when I run into a problem I want an answer. Another reason why for me documentation is so critical as I find looking for answers in the documentation can be rewarding as you learn other stuff on the way.
Please don’t get me wrong I’m not knocking the documentation provided with Blocs, I would just like to see a lot more of it especially on the more esoteric stuff.
If I could have one wish to make me more successful with blocks it would be the availability of a comprehensive COOKBOOK, with detailed explanations of how to accomplish very specific tasks! All of which I know can be done in Blocs ,but first I need to know how to get there.
Blocs rocs!
Forgot to add some links to sites I’ve built with RW and Stacks that I will be attempting to replicate in Blocs.
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I fully agree about the lack of documentation. It has always been the weakest point in Blocs coming from RW myself. Part of the problem has been the rocket powered rate of progress with Blocs, because it has undergone massive changes over the last 12 months and anything you studied back then likely has no resemblance to what you see now.
To give some perspective, Realmac charges customers to access their videos, which I always found pretty outrageous. They also rely on stack developers to pick up a lot of the slack both in features and documentation for their add-ons. This is starting to become less of a problem now that the Blocs forums have become busier, but I agree it needs some improvement.
If you want to take a crash course Eldar produces a paid video course for Blocs, but quite a large part of Blocs is simply understanding the basic concepts and experiment by trying everything, rather than wondering why it doesn’t work like RW.
I actually opened an old project done in RW yesterday to make a small adjustment and wanted to be out of there as quickly as possible. The cluttered interface of the stacks and freakishly slow page previews was like a trip through hell after Blocs 3.
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I have to agree now when I go back to work in RW it becomes very frustrating due to how slow everything is, even minor tweaks seem to take forever. This was another of the many reasons I am so excited about Blocs.
It does look like the courses Eldar provides are going to become essential but in previewing some of the ones that were done for Blocs 2 they are not that relevant to Blocs 3. So I will have to see how he goes with the new ones he has planned for this year.
For sure another attraction with Blocs is the fact that it is being actively developed and moving forward rapidly, that is critical for me and another thing I have against RW is the slow pace of advancement over there.
You might be surprised at how many RW users have made their way over here and it’s the same story every time. First they struggle with the lack of documentation, then they hate missing their favourite two or three stacks, but if they persevere for a while and build a couple sites wild horses wouldn’t drag them back to RW.
Personally I found Blocs 2 quite frustrating on various levels and only persevered, so I could hit the ground running with Blocs 3. The current version is a totally different beast from what we had 6 months ago. It’s so much more stable with lots more features and more intuitive. You really need to get stuck in with those custom classes.
The developer API is undergoing an overhaul, so I would expect to see more advanced custom brics in a few months time and there are some huge updates coming to Blocs 3. It is really worth sticking around.
I’m most certainly planning on sticking around I can see nothing but upsides!
You are right about those custom classes, that is something else, very powerful, but that is where the documentation is hurting me the most. Learning how to leverage them is critical it seems.
Just go wild with custom classes and experiment. Most changes can be seen in real time while in edit mode and in a worst case scenario just hit the delete button.
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Great sites BTW. I see you tucked into the new Thunder Pack. Blocs can build the 2 sites with ease and you won’t have the restrictions of Foundry.
PS You have quite a few errors on Hanalei Fins site you probably need to sort out.
Hey, welcome and it’s good to have you with us 
The Blocs documentation is a work in progress, however, we have almost 120 posts in our knowledge base now and it’s growing weekly.
Can you be specific on the basics you want documentation for?
I’ll be honest, when I compare the Blocs docs to all of the other web design apps on the Mac, ours are some of the most complete, so I’m always eager to hear specifics of what you can’t find.
Yes, I have been working on moving and organizing some images on the server and was in the process of fixing the few broken image links that have showed up.
Beautifully design websites
Aloha Norm:
Don’t get me wrong your documentation is great, especially when compared to RW.
For me though the biggest hole is the fact that it is hard to ferret out the details, most of which have to do with how to use the various classes and sub-classes.
For example, on the site I’m working on I would like to have the items in the global navbar indicate with a different color the currently active page. I’m sure this is dead easy but I cannot figure it out. I watched a video that Eldar has that showed how to do it in Blocs 2, but that does not carry over to Blocs 3 at all as many of the options he used are either not available or somewhere else that I’m not aware of, or can find.
There are many small examples like this that I know there are solutions for, because Blocs is clearly powerful enough to provide them, but they are not obvious to someone who is not well versed in the app.
Which is why something like a cookbook is so useful as it would really be a bunch of little recipes that someone could look up to see how something is done.
I think my biggest beef with the documentation is simply the lack of concrete examples, like this really simple one, of many, that I’m trying to solve. Things are generally very well covered but for me it is just a lack of details, I learn by seeing examples of how something is done.
I know it is probably hard to divide time between documentation and coding, because anytime spent on docs means fewer bugs are getting fixed. But solid documentation means less support needed ultimately.
Please don’t get me wrong I’m not complaining about the documentation, I’m just trying to find the path of least resistance to getting the knowledge I need to be really productive with Blocs. You are dead right though compared to say the RW documentation tours are way ahead of the game.
I’m super happy with Blocs, trust me! I just want to get really good at using it and squeezing the most I can get out of it’s capabilities.
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That’s good to hear.
If you could compile a little list of these mini recipes I could get some added to the current docs.
Hi Robin,
I am glad to see you are enjoying using Blocs!
Like @Flashman said,
I will cover every single feature of Blocs 3, but to be honest, you need to just understand how the core features of Blocs work to master it (working with columns, custom classes, etc).
I have created about 200 videos for Blocs 2 over the years, and I am on my way to create even more for Blocs 3 this year. There are already about 50 videos just for Blocs 3 on Blocs Master and my YouTube channel, and about 15 more new videos are coming this week.
By the way, in my experience, the videos from Blocs 2 series are still quite helpful and apply to Blocs 3 as well. For example:
To summarize the video I have created for Blocs 2 (take a look at it below), you just need to understand that the global area is the same for all pages. As a result, you need to move the navigation to dynamic area and modify it on each page manually. Not very intuitive, but it’s not as difficult as it sounds and it’s the same story in both Blocs 2 and Blocs 3.
I am committing to release a new pack of videos every month this year, and I spend many hours thinking what will be the best topic to cover in each month’s update. I have started with the essentials like Columns and Custom Classes (coming this week), plus I tried to cover the whole process in Blocs for Beginners course.
I also think that Blocs Knowledge Base is so underrated. I use it very often for reference when people are asking me questions about Blocs 3.
Cheers,
Eldar
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