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 3.5.1:
Canvas ruler marker glitches
Blocs crashing when using close keyboard shortcut during save
Iframes working when exporting to October or Pulse CMS
Rows aligning side by side inside a full screen Bloc
Items above links with stretched link class added to be un-selectable on the design canvas
Line breaks being pasted into unsupported elements
Line breaks in logos causing layer tree to break
Custom Bric section titles being white when app is run in light mode
Newly added image assets showing alternative asset thumb
Fully removing replaced embedded assets
Blocs crashing when saving to iCloud
Embedded assets reconnecting when assets have apostrophes in file name
Layer tree breaking when unsupported items are present
This is the latest version of Blocs for Mac, we recommended that you update as soon as possible to ensure you receive the best user experience
New Features:
- Add System Status Report Log Generator. Main Menu > Help > Generate App Status Report
- Added export helper for Volt CMS blog Bric
- Improved save file performance time
Improved:
Join over 500,000 subscribers.
Subscribe for our newsletter with best Mac offers from MacUpdate.
How would you rate Blocs app?
39 Reviews of Blocs
See allMost helpful
Another MAJOR advantage: You download & pay the software once, and you are free to use it for as many websites as you'd like to, no monthly fee, free forever. Almost no other modern website builder can compete with this offer, I've searched a lot before I found Blocs...
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.