Blocs
3.4.1
Blocs
3.4.1Visual web-design tool.
Overview
Blocs for Mac is a fast, easy-to-use, powerful visual web-design tool that lets you create beautiful, modern websites without the need to write code. Cleverly designed to accommodate complete beginners or those familiar with web design. You will love building with Blocs.
Features
- Designed For Simplicity - Building with Blocs is simple and fun. A clean, intuitive interface makes creating sites unbelievably quick. Simply click, select, edit and enjoy stacking blocks to build your website. Its ease of use will make you feel right at home.
- Powerful Styling features - Behind the simplified interface of Blocs lie some of its more advanced editing features. When you are ready to get more creative with your designs, Blocs will grow with you. You set the pace.
- Create CMS-Driven Websites - Blocs has integrated support for a range of premium (paid) and open source (free) third-party content management systems. It's now possible to easily create powerful, dynamic websites, that can be updated and contributed to, right from your web browser.
- Time-Saving features - Paint mode, global swatches, auto text colouring and one click animations are just a few of the playful, time saving features in Blocs. You’ll be amazed how quickly you can create a website.
- No subscription, unlimited web sites
What's new in Blocs
Version 3.4.1:
New features:
- Added ability to lock horizontal canvas scroll (right click a Bloc or canvas).
- Asset Manager now scrolls to the currently selected image when selected on the design canvas.
Fixed:
- Issue that prevented the save prompt from showing when changing some project settings and closing app.
- Issue that caused pre Blocs 3.4 projects to crash the application when first loaded.
- Issue that caused Blocs canvas to be unresponsive when saving a project with Project Settings open.
- Issue with page navigator going out of sync when has search value and layer tree is activated.
- Issue that caused Blocs to crash on save if the Page navigator search bar has a value with no results.
- Issue that Blocked access to the scroll bar in the left sidebar.
- Issue that caused preview mode to break with older Blocs projects.
Blocs Screenshots
$99.99
App requirements:
- Intel 64
- OS X 10.11.0 or later
Category:
Developer Website:
Install with MacUpdateDownloaded & Installed 11,769 times
37 Blocs Reviews
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Most helpful
It offers amazing control with the new column adjustments that allow you to resize visually in a couple seconds at four different breakpoints. Then you can create freehand margin adjustments that automatically set custom classes; again individually configurable at each breakpoint in real time.
Two columns with unequal quantities of content? Just click the full column height alignment to make them equal and while you are there why not create a graduated background on uniquely shaped button to stand out from the crowd.
It includes the ability to create complex forms, plus a wide range of built in design configurations and practically anything you can think of yourself, leveraging the power of Bootstrap 4. It does all of this and much more straight out of the box without having to spend another cent on endless $$ plugins.
Are there things I would change or improve? Yes without a doubt, but with Blocs 3 you get the sense they are all coming pretty soon.
After trying out the week long demo (which really wasn't long enough to get used to the software) I've come to some conclusions:
As one of the reviewers below has mentioned, it's not really intuitive; there are many, many frustrating moments trying to move blocs to where you want them to be to no avail. You seem to have to create custom classes (like stylesheets) to get anything anywhere close. Surely having all these options readily available in the one panel should be better?
Adding images looks promising, giving an asset library to add to. However, if you're image is bigger than 3MB, it won't add it in. It just tells you that it's too big! Could Blocs not resize to suit like most other applications seem to be able to do?
There's possibly an ability to add webfonts or your own fonts, but I couldn't work this out.
One of the main things that appealed to me was the ability to use a CMS. My clients constantly ask me if they can be given the ability to add and change photos, update news, etc. However, this is not as easy or as user friendly as you would expect. I tried installing October CMS, a freemium CMS. I installed on the server and eventually got it set up. Once I logged in to the 'backend' I quickly realised this was no good! I was faced with an unusual, albeit friendly looking code window. You seem to have to enter the text in what looks like an HTML editor along with links and the relevant code for your images. Surely this isn't what the client wants? I realise October CMS is not developed by Blocs so not really their fault, but I am surprised and disappointed in this integration.
The lack of an FTP upload is strangely lacking. It surely shouldn't be difficult to add this feature to prevent the complete export and upload of the site each time a change is made.
Among the several quirks I found was the strange resizing of images among the responsive layout. There were sometimes gaps at the bottom of images and then they'd disappear.
Anyway, this is just my short experience of Blocs.
I like the drag and drop nature of the application and feel Blocs has a lot of potential. It just has a fair bit to go before I would feel comfortable using it for a client's site - the moment they came back to me and said "could you move that there, or could you add this...", I'd balk.
I found the following statements to be untrue, and frankly, dishonest:
“Quality: Blocs generates good quality organized code with no clutter or inline styles.”
If you examine the Blocs.app official site, which claims it was built using Blocs.app, you will see inline styles, and it suffers from “divitis” as well as a truckload of non-semantic class names. General users and those who know just the basics of HTML couldn’t tell the difference, but real developers who know HTML/CSS would cringe at the code.
“No Coding: You don't need to understand or use any coding to build a website with Blocs.”
The irony of GUI web builder tools, in general, is that you can get the most out of it when you know things like how CSS box model works and how you write semantic HTML code. I find it true in this case as well.
“Easy to Use: Blocs is one of the easiest website building tools, anyone can build with Blocs.”
It is only half true. Sure, you can whip up a page, but you still need to know how to use FTP, and some other minor but definite details. You will need to know even more if you want to integrate a CMS or go beyond the most basic features. Online services such as Squarespace is a little more guided, it doesn’t require that users know how to do FTP, and things like that.
“Developer: Blocs generates good quality, clean code. This makes it the perfect springboard to get the basics in place, fast.”
It is just not true as explained above. Most developers who know how to code would cringe at the code and would most likely try reproducing the same layout from scratch using a more standard set of tools and frameworks.
There is also a question about whether you should allow people with no clue about design and basic coding skills to build a website in the first place. A developer with some level of knowledge could create a decent-looking website using Blocks.app, but people with no clue about design, proper content authoring and complete lack of knowledge of HTML/CSS will likely struggle despite Blocs.app’s claims. Tricking those users into believing that web design is as easy as writing something in Microsoft Word is dishonesty in disguise, much like how it was with Macaw editor.
Like I mentioned last time, your review process is very hot and cold, it’s either one star or five stars. I appreciate you’re entitled to your opinion, but from reading your other reviews on various apps in this area, my personal opinion is that you are on some kind of crusade against apps that create websites for none-developers, however I could be wrong.
I’d like to give some feedback to your comments.
Inline styles: Upon export, Blocs actual checks for inline styles in the html and removes them, the only time an inline style is used is to set the height of a hero bloc so that it fits to the height of the screen. This is of course a dynamic application done with Javascript not one that’s static. The copy from our landing page will be updated to reflect this. So in general, there are no inline styles, but the hero bloc will use one dynamically along with JS simply to fill the screen.
Non-semantic Class Names: Users are able to control class names, so this is just down to my personal choice when I created the Blocs site, however, there are some that are generated for you, and they take on the same standardisation as the vanilla Bootstrap ones with the adoption of -sm -md -lg.
Understanding CSS: Yes, it’s true the more you understand about CSS and HTML the more creative you can get with Blocs. But for a lot of people, just being able to create a layout with a few clicks is very empowering.
FTP: Blocs is an app designed for creating websites, it doesn’t handle some of the other tasks that are commonly connected with web development in general, such as handling site hosting or acquiring a domain name or as you stated handling the upload of your site to a server. That’s because Blocs is a tool for creating websites, not hosting them or transferring them to servers.
Code Quality: This is a matter of opinion, in your previous review (5 stars) these are your words “ the generated code also looks well-coded and well-formatted” you actually stated the code quality was good, but now all of a sudden the code quality is bad? You also make a statement about using standard frameworks, almost everything Blocs uses to create web pages is a standard framework from the Bootstrap to animate.css.
From your most recent review, it’s this comment I find the most offensive “There is also a question about whether you should allow people with no clue about design and basic coding skills to build a website in the first place.” Your general tone here does come across condescending, ok we get it you know how to code, but why should someone without the technical knowledge not be encouraged to try?
I appreciate you took the time to comment thoroughly, and I would like to respond to each point.
## Inline styles
It’s great to hear that the direction Blocs.app is taking is right. However, the dynamic JS height trick you talk about is still not how a web developer with semantic coding skills would code a website. I wouldn’t blame you for that, though. It simply shows that it’s hard to get a piece of software to handle something like this.
## Non-semantic class names
Users can control *some* class names but not all, especially when you use one of the built-in components. It is not unique to Blocks.app. I’ve seen the same limitation with practically every visual builder I’ve tried. Pinegrow, for example, is able to whip up a landing page with its pre-fabricated components, but it gives me class names like “section-1” “section-2”, etc. The only way to change that is to go through every class name and manually change them in CSS.
## Understanding CSS
Should we empower amateurs by tricking them into thinking that web design is as easy as creating a document in MS Word and none of the code quality stuff matters because it looks fine on the surface? You call this stance condescending, but I call your comment dishonesty. There is nothing new about any of this. Dreamweaver has already tried back in 1990’s. Graphic designers thought they no longer needed to code, they disrespected coders and called them HTML monkeys, and they spewed billions of lines of generated spaghetti codes all over the Internet. We ended up with so many gazillions of websites that were slow to load, difficult to maintain, and nightmarish for coders to add backend features. Macaw is a more recent reincarnation of the same old garbage. The whole industry hyped Macaw so much to the point that Jeffery Zeldman would spend an hour interviewing the lead developer on his show. They claimed that it was the beginning of the end of handcoding, people will “code visually” and so on. It took them only about a couple of years before they completely abandoned it and sold themselves to InVision.
All these sagas are a sign of people trying in vain to find a technological solution for the wrong high-level approach.
Amateurs can “empower” themselves by learning to code HTML/CSS/Bootstrap. The industry has made HTML/CSS into a rubber dragon at this point. It’s not that hard to learn. Nobody is saying they shouldn’t. Why do we keep telling them the lie that they can make a “professional website” without coding?
## FTP
Copout. What’s the point of building a website if they can’t even upload it to somewhere on the Internet?
## Code quality
Yes, I changed my stance on this matter. That’s why I added this to my previous review: “Hence, I rate my five-star review 1/2 star, and I hereby denounce the positive review.” I rate my own review 1/2 star because it turned out that it was largely based on ignorance on my part and therefore I wrote an incorrect, bad review.
## Encouraged to try?
They should not be encouraged to try doing it the wrong way. Instead, the industry should encourage them to try the right way, and it is to learn to code and handle it directly. Dreamweaver encouraged them to do it the wrong way, and guess where it led them? It kept them from learning to code, it kept them believe that they were not at fault, and real coders suffered. Who said they couldn’t try learning to code? It’s not that hard.
I admit that I missed one fact about the software: Norm-1 is right, you can indeed change most of the class names that says “bloc,” even the ones assigned by default, right in the Class Manager. That's cool.
I also admit that it is indeed kind of fun to be able to quickly whip up a nice looking landing page in a matter of a few minutes. Mentally, it is much less taxing than manually coding or even editing a template manually in code. No denying on that for sure. Although I advocate working with code, I am struggling to determine whether it matters as much as I think it does. Clean code, sure, but to what extent? Coding everything by hand is tedious and, I confess, it is prone to typos and unclosed tags. The approach Blocs.app seems to suggest is indeed tempting.
I guess I will take back some of my previous comments and keep an eye on this app. I can be very critical, but I am also for supporting developers. I was probably a bit harsher than I had to be.
Let me offer some advice. Your comments come from a place were you want to encourage people to code websites by hand, learn the craft you have because you see that as the only way to do a truly great job. Not everyone has the time or the capacity / general interest to do this. Technology is here to make things easier, which ever way you look at it, the future of web design is to simplify the process of getting from A to B but still allow for creativity. I'll be honest, your comments at times insinuate developers like myself (who have deadicated years of work to try and make this breakthrough) out to be liars and in some respect fraudsters. Honestly I can't tell you how much that hurts to hear, when it's not our intentions at all, we want to make building websites more accessible so anyone can try, you just never know we're that path may lead that person who otherwise would never have tried.
My idea for Blocs came when playing MindCraft with my 6 yr old nephew. I thought this game (MindCraft) is just a 3D modelling app made so simple kids can use it, I'd love a web design tool that does this. So I made it. To some degree a child could build a basic site in Blocs (zero coding), why is that a bad thing? If anything, it opens new doors at an even younger age.
I know it's important for you to be honest, but try to consider, someone, somewhere made this app, lost hours of sleep trying to make it the best they could.
Be honest but also be fair and try to look at how effective the app (you're cutting down) is to a broader audience, rather than just yourself. I know that's hard, but it's what makes a good review.
No one cares about website code except people who code. The end result and how it works is what's important. That there are no errors and everything looks how it's supposed to look. Your parents don't care what the backend code on a website looks like or how many div's there are. They want a website to work when they click on buttons. That's pretty much it. That's the most important lesson I've learned about designing and building sites and I've been doing it since 1997 when I started learning using Claris Homepage.
That said, Blocs is a much easier app to use and produces better code than Dreamweaver (or at least what Dreamweaver used to - I haven't used it in a while). For people that don't want to get their hands too dirty with code it's a fantastic option. And actually, this app is way easier to use than Microsoft Word from my experience (especially Word 6).
If you are looking for an app that let's you control the code even more, while still giving you an interface, then I would recommend Pinegrow, which is also a fantastic app, but more complex.
This comment is my attempt to correct my previous rating below. Since MU doesn't give me the option to delete it, I am posting this so that people know the developer of Blocs doesn't deserve a rash, incorrect comment I made earlier.
After giving a lot more time experimenting with Blocs, I have to say that this is an impressive piece of software.
It allows you to build a modern, professionally-looking website in a matter of minutes without having to do fiddly hand-coding. "Professionally-looking" doesn't stop at aesthetics; the generated code also looks well-coded and well-formatted. You can even customize IDs and Classes right in its GUI panel, so the generated code will look just as if you coded by hand.
I believe it's great not just for non-coders but also for developers and designers who are building websites for clients. It's a great springboard tool for prototyping that they could develop into a production site. They might even be able to create a finished site if the design/feature requirements are minimal. Those who are familiar with Bootstrap should be able to get a ton out of this time-saving tool.
Overall, the developer of Blocs has done an admirable job. Blocs delivers.
It generates the code that is easily identifiable as a Blocs-generated site, so it is not for anyone who cares about clean and quality code. It's ok for those who want a "No code necessary" type website builder, but then I suspect they would be better off using a hosted solution such as Squarespace.
Design variation is also limited. It generates a typical landing page layout that's already overused all over the web.
HTML/CSS isn't that hard. You might want to try this website before shelling out $80 on this software:
http://jgthms.com/web-design-in-4-minutes/
I fiddled with it some more after writing my first impression and found it to be pretty good. Sure you could hand code your static site, but this is FAR easier, FAR quicker and, once exported, the overall code quality is not bad at all. You could host a Blocs-generated site anywhere. So, you could host it on a cheap hosting and skip paying for a SaaS.
Developers who can code could still use this as a springboard to kick-start a project or even use it as a prototyping tool.
So, yes, I stand corrected. I will post a revised review since I can't delete this one.