Any Blocs 3 users in the house?

General Web Design
42

Hey everyone,

For those who don’t know me, I’m Norm the creator of Blocs.

I come in peace :)

I was made aware of this forum/thread over the weekend and read some of the comments good and bad about Blocs and just wanted to chime in so I could clarify a few things as I would hate for them to be misinterpreted.

My point at the time was based on my ethos of Blocs, which is to try and simplify the user interface and experience in order to bring users the essentials without too much clutter or confusion. The reason the XL breakpoint was left out is because, for the majority, it’s simply not as crucial as the other breakpoints. That decision is based on modern standards and the mobile first mentality.

(Anything above 1200px wide, just looks the same as 1200px. If you then use edge to edge Blocs you can actually have the content right at the edges of a huge display.)

As the creator of Blocs, I make calls like this and of course it’s the user’s job to let me know when I’m wrong. What I do in these circumstances is keep a tally, once something gets enough requests (not hundreds) I add it. This XL breakpoint has been mentioned a couple of times. That data tells me, it’s not critical and in the mind of the user not that essential (right now).

But to be clear, I’m sorry you felt my attitude was that I simply disregard ideas and suggestion just because I don’t use them personally, it’s absolutely not the case. I’m very hands on with the user community of Blocs and I think most would agree I listen and consider all feedback.

This is currently in alpha (work in progress), and has been for a while now. I’m hoping to get it into beta in the coming months. We don’t really advertise the fact that there is an API due to the alpha state. When we hit beta you will see a bigger drive from us, to promote it and I’m sure in turn a rise in interest from 3rd parties.

I think it’s fair to say the only reason not many have jumped in yet, is because we are still filling the swimming pool :)

Thanks for the continued interest. It would be great to hear a little more detail on the areas you think Blocs needs to improve to become a tool you would consider :)

8 Likes
43

40321.jpg1024×564 136 KB

3 Likes
44

Hello Norm,

welcome :-) Can‘t wait to try Blocs in earnest. Love your Website!

2 Likes
46

Hi!
Sure, and I know this is a catch 22 thing. But Blocs in its current state is a hard sell to my clients. They mostly use and love WP, their 3rd parties (marketing, CRM etc), also love it. Admin/writers, editors are also very familiar with the WP environment, its browser based (anybody can work on a site, from Devs to designers).

When I present a client with an alternative, (Blocs or whatever), the first thing that will come out of their mouths is … why? At this stage I can’t really answer that. Other than saying ‘it’s a great design tool for the Mac’. I’ve mentioned this a few times but for us, making a website nowadays is 50% or less , creating a real world online presence involves all the above mentioned. Currently theres just not that support with Blocs (yet, I guess).

47

Oct 17 I asked you if you were going to support all 4 breakpoints (5screen sizes):

Yes all 4 BS4 breakpoints will be supported in Blocs 3. I’m not sure what’s going to happen with old files (BS3). Blocs 3 may be BS 4 only but have the option to upgrade old files to BS4.

In July 2018 you I was surprised that you had changed your mind on that I posted my concerns and the reply was:

I can add the 1200px+ breakpoint ( personaly I think it’s pointless). Breakpoints for extra large screens just feels unnecessary. All the smaller ones are there.

I did give you feedback. I take more faith in a huge community like bootstrap to determine a fundamental thing like how many breakpoints.

Mobile-first NOT mobile only. Come to almost any U.s> base large-cap company office and see how many folks have large monitors and do a lot of web surfing at.

I can see how adding one more icon to this crowded tools bar would have been way too confusing:

2019-02-04_10-17-09
2019-02-04_10-17-09891×82 5.98 KB

1 Like
48

It’s not just about the toolbar Interface. Visibility controls and various other areas in the app are also affected by this 5th icon and would require additional work. But this is also about workflow, not just visuals.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it is there for a reason and I’m not questioning it being included in the developer focused Bootstrap framework. I just question it’s importance in a web design app that is trying to be more streamlined and focused on essentials and simplifying the process.

I’m not sure what you mean by mobile-only? It’s not like Blocs only has the mobile breakpoint, you can customise at 4 screen widths.

Maybe You could share some of your own examples of sites you have built in which using the XL breakpoint provides such important layout and structure changes/improvements that the standard 1200px breakpoint can’t offer. This may help me get a better understanding of your thoughts and requirements.

49

Bloody hell, it’s getting like the RW forum suddenly! Least no one here will get mod’d or banned.

Welcome to the forum Norm, as you can see, no one is here precious about any particular platform, good to have a different perspective onboard.

BTW- I don’t speak for the forum as such, I’m just one of the regulars, I’ve no idea why it says El Presidente next to my name. I possibly did it once when pissed, dunno. I can’t see how to change it back.

2 Likes
50

That was me. @paul.russam said: either ban this man or call him El Presidente.

If you don’t like the title, I am able to ban you also. As you like.

6 Likes
51

Ahh I see. Personally, I don’t view Blocs as the product you sell to your customer. What Blocs creates is what you sell to the customer. But of course in your case (and many others), customers want a way to update content manually, so I completely see why you view it this way based on what Blocs currently provides.

Blocs will continue to support 3rd party CMS options going forward (including Wordpress) maybe when we get to that stage, exporting to a custom WP theme, Blocs will be a better fit for your needs.

Thanks for taking the time to expand on this.

3 Likes
52

We both know that sooner or later that’ll happen anyway. It’s just a case of when I get drunk enough and call everyone dicks.

4 Likes
53

Thanks for the warm welcome el presidente

2 Likes
54

@Norm Big welcome to the forum and thanks for making the whole breakpoint thing crystal clear.

@Teefers I don’t understand your comment about Blocs being mobile only, either. The 4 breakpoints in Blocs are very different than the 2 breakpoints (all different) used in Stacks, Joe’s Foundation and Elixir’s Bootstrap4 Foundry. Those breakpoints mostly show or hide content which is far from ideal. Very few RW developers add more than 2 breakpoints and it is powerful feature to have in these stacks.

Blocs3 is totally different in that every single Block or Bric (or hand code) has a full set of settings specific to each of the 4 breakpoints. This will blow some Weaver’s minds, but you could for example, have a different typeface, text colour, letter spacing, padding, animation direct, animation timing, translucency, different BG warehoused image, etc, etc, - for each of the 4 breakpoints. Blocs remains super quick even with this amount of control over every setting at each of the 4 breakpoints.

3 Likes
55

All I can say is that thank goodness that media queries and breakpoints will soon be dead! They are utterly primitive and repetitive.

Soon we can move to a proper responsive system controlled by element / container queries and things will be mathematical.

Anyone fancy an argument about whether a steam engine is better than a horse?

3 Likes
56

Steam engines don’t shit. Therefore, win.

2 Likes
57

Interesting, I’d love to know more about this new approach!

58

That already happened. You don’t remember because you have been drunk, obviously. The outcome is you are now the president. Sounds like real life 🤣

There are better ways instead of banning 😁

Wanna have an electric car instead 🤔

Me too!

2 Likes
59

My point is I get tired of people use “Mobile-first” as a catchphrase for why they drop support for the larger size screens. Seems to be the new thing to say.
Also, Blocs3 supports three breakpoints (4 screen sizes). Bootstrap 4 supports four breakpoints (5 screen sizes).

The reality is I was a big supporter of Blocs, but sorry, I asked a question back in Dec of 17 about Blocs 3(being based on Bootstrap 4). Honestly one of my concerns with Blocs 2 was it had dropped one of the bootstrap3 breakpoints.

My issue is that from Dec 17 to July 18 without any input or “hey” what do you think, It was decided to drop a breakpoint. Doesn’t that sound a lot like what RM does that folks complain? I was on the Bloc’s Forum most days and didn’t hear a thing.

The large community of bootstrap developers spent years developing bootstrap 4, during the Alpha testing they went from the old style float and clear-fixes for the grid system to Flexbox because during the alpha testing period (about 18 months) browser support for flexbox had become acceptable. Keep in mind Bootstrap 3 already had three breakpoints(4 screen sizes), one of the major enhancements for BS4 was adding a fourth breakpoint that would allow support for five screen sizes. During that same time frame, mobile use had drastically increased, but they didn’t drop the newly added breakpoint.

As for RapidWeaver’s vs. whatever, I wasn’t comparing RW to Bloc’s or WP to RW. My thoughts were to answer the question of looking at alternatives.

1 Like
60

There are already polyfills appearing but the basic premise is that an element should determine the space that it needs to be visually coherent and/or perform its function. If we were starting from scratch, this would seem a much more logical approach than using the browser width as a datum.

This was a quite detailed proposal which while quite old now servers well to describe the principles
https://tomhodgins.github.io/element-queries-spec/element-queries.html

2 Likes
61

I will swot up on this. It’s a task to keep up with both MacOS dev and web dev.

1 Like
62

I wouldn’t worry unduly at the moment, I suspect it will be at least 12-18 months before the first browser implementations and the adoption cycle will be long.

4 Likes