Version 23.7 Blocks

[Chris M]

Both, there is a process, sadly, needed on both Main and Variant.

You have to think Shape, Web Block, FlexGroup, Blockbackground.

Taking @Gary's demo design file:

• The image was Justify Right - set to Justify Left.
  
  • The image was too wide. - Alt-Selected right edge and reduced to page width.
  
  
• WB was too deep - selected and picked bottom boundary and moved up.
• FlexGroup was too wide - Alt-selected right edge to touch page edge.
• BlockBackground check - was at origin.
• Ditto above for Variant.

I also set Main's image to Full Width & Tiled.

FlexBlock_Alignment - Acorn tidy.xar

@Xara - all this is an edge case but it necessarily needs to be automated.

Acorn

I'm missing something, probably something small, but vital.

I did all the bullet points above.
Confusion 1: why does altering the main variant to Left Justify have any bearing on this?
Confusion 2: by alt-select, you are referring to the ALT keyboard key, correct?
Confusion 3: alt-select, standard select, triple checking that it's left justified, having the background less than page width and varying the strength of curse words has no effect. Flexithing bounces back.
Gary happily said "Cool, I get it, and now I know, it will never happen again." It will happen many times with me, because, just to use a Flexible Block, with one object, I have to set 4 toolbar setting to 0px, and ensure the object is less than page width? I want to drop that sucker into the Block, adjust like I would do in every other occurrence in Xara, and move on.

I agree it's better to know HOW these things work, but the whole point of this post is to use Blocks as we are told they can be used. The YouTube videos I have watched all show someone whistling a happy tune and throwing Blocks around, which all jump up and arrange themselves like Mickey cleaning the sorcerer's room in Fantasia.

Before Blocks were released, we were told on this very forum, that something new and exciting was about to be released, that we would love it. It would change the way we build websites forever. A site could be built in minutes. Well, here we are, fudging, creating workarounds, spending hours on one simple thing because it doesn't work.

I totally understand that new things will have unforeseen issues. I understand that I, as a user, will make mistakes and do things that are silly. But, this is my fifth attempt at creating a simple site, that I would love, and would take mere minutes. I should be getting the basics by now, surely. I should be able to throw my Blocks onto a page and quickly arrange them, no?

I have no objection to uploading the project file, but, as I said earlier, I really don't want this to turn into the usual "yeah, it doesn't work. What you have to do is...." thread. I wanted it to be a "ahh, so I can just...and...that's great, I can now..." thread.

[Acorn]

@Chris, sorry my 'Alt+Select' is hold down the Left Alt key while dragging the rightmost middle control with the Left Select mouse down for the FlexGroup.
Only needed is Smart transform is Off, which is the way I always work to preserve my sanity. I didn't say anything about left aligning the Variant.

Not essential for the bottom middle control of the Web Block but again it maintains a consistency my muscle memory can accommodate.

Left Align is essential for a full-sized image as it does its own thing if Centre or Right Aligned.

It should not be the case that making an image too big throws so much off, hence my barb at Xara.

Acorn

[Chris M]

@Chris, sorry my 'Alt+Select' is hold down the Left Alt key while dragging the rightmost middle control with the Left Select mouse down for the FlexGroup.
Only needed is Smart transform is Off, which is the way I always work to preserve my sanity. I didn't say anything about left aligning the Variant.

Not essential for the bottom middle control of the Web Block but again it maintains a consistency my muscle memory can accommodate.

Left Align is essential for a full-sized image as it does its own thing if Centre or Right Aligned.

It should not be the case that making an image too big throws so much off, hence my barb at Xara.

Acorn

The confusion 1 about the main variant being involved was your first line. "Sadly, needed on both Main and Variant." I see what you meant now...it can happen on BOTH, as opposed to need to apply the FIX on both.

I'm going to upload my project file, as I'm still failing to reduce the width of the FlexiThing. I can't even find the 'middle control'. The cursor changes to 'I'm In Adjust Mode', Smart Transform is off, background is way less than page width, as is the object. I drag left, I release, the FlexiThing springs back and flips me the middle finger.

>>> FlexiThing.xar <<<

[Chris M]

Whipping through the second page. No real problems, just a few observations:
I started with the Mobile Variant. The page is literally text area followed by image, repeat. So I made each section a Flexible Block as centring each object is what I want.
Moving to the Main Variant and I realised I would like to have some of the images arranged around the text area, as opposed to squarely above. I knew the following may well cause problems, but I had a go anyway:

I have FlexBlock with text, then FlexBlock with image, then another FlexBlock with image. My idea was to rip the two images out of their FlexBlocks and ALT drop them into the text Flexblock so I could arrange them more aesthetically. I was happy to leave the Mobile as is, but, since 23.8 there HAS to be the same blocks in both variants, so I was more than happy to have the Mobile arranged with all three items in one Block.

It worked, nearly. I dragged an image out, dropped it in no-mans land, then ALT dropped it into the FlexiBlock with the text. Checked the Mobile and the image is dutifully sat below the text. I repeated with the second image, and again, success.
I then tried to move and resize the images to where I wanted them in the Main Variant. Apparently, the ALT drop is a one-trick pony, the image was no longer free to roam around the FlexiBlock. I did some fiddling and messing and somewhere alog the way I lost the second image. Putting the second image back in created an identical copy in the Mobile Variant. I now have twins.

Not hard to recover from. In fact, all the problems I've encountered are easy to recover by simply deleting the Block and popping a new one in. Not something that can be done so quickly with a traditional site (I might change my mind when Layers are employed).

It would be nice if I could toggle between Flexible and Freestyle.

[Initiostar]

When one grasps where to use Flexible Blocks and where to use Freehand Blocks, design gets easier:

Here's today's update: included the use of Clip View to create an interesting effect that stretches the full browser width, and a full browser width slider (the latter being in use on several traditional sites):

https://initiostar.co.uk/demo/blocks2/

Sadly, I can still replicate chaos by placing an object or group of objects, where the horizontal dimension of the object or group of objects is bigger that those of the FlexGroup within the FlexBlock. The FlexGroup extends the FlexBlock and one has a lot of fiddling about to reset it.

@ Chris, the only block I could see in your example with its width extended beyond the page width was the widget: I went to the P&L Gallery, SOLO select the FlexGroup, dragged all contents out the block, resized the FlexGroup, BlockBackground and Block; made sure the Widget size was reduced to fit the within the FlexGroup, added it back; all is well (though no content as it was not connected).

FlexiThing_Widget_Alighment_1.xar

I did get a message (copied into the above file) that the number of matching Web Blocks in variants were different, but that might be historic.

[Chris M]

@ Chris, the only block I could see in your example with its width extended beyond the page width was the widget: I went to the P&L Gallery, SOLO select the FlexGroup, dragged all contents out the block, resized the FlexGroup, BlockBackground and Block; made sure the Widget size was reduced to fit the within the FlexGroup, added it back; all is well (though no content as it was not connected).

Emptying the Block is the trick. I can easily resize once the content is removed. I didn't make that connection. I tried, on many numerous occasions, to adjust with the content in place. Once I reached the 'empty the sucker' stage, I automatically banished the whole thing to the bowels of the recycle bin and deployed a new, shiny one.

The number of blocks mismatch is an anomaly to this copy. I have had that before, but not after the 23.8 update.

[Chris M]

>>> AUZLINK <<<

50 odd posts ago, I wrote about my first attempt at making a small site that incorporated both Flexible Blocks and Freestyle Blocks. I used the blank, transparent Blocks from Elements and no predesigned templates. I had horrendous issues, which were mainly cured with the 23.8 update and my journey up the learning curve.

I remade the same site from scratch so as not to bring over any mistakes. This time, things went ahead a lot smoother. There were a couple of 'huh' moments, but they were me not doing things correctly. The Xara Blocks system (in this simple site) worked as advertised.

Observations:
1) I started with the mobile variant. The reasoning being, it should be easier to make things bigger to suit a large Block, rather than shrink them to fit in a small Block. This led me, on several occasions, to want to move objects from one Block to another. This was easy and worked well. However, I wanted to arrange Feestyle in the main, whereas I had used Flexible in the mobile. Not too hard to remove all the objects and then delete the Block so I could replace it with a Freestyle Block. A bit of messing about, but not a real pain.
2) I whinged about not being able to have repeating objects. I would still find it useful to be able to repeat whole blocks, but copy/paste was a breeze.

Things I feel need improving sooner rather than later:
1) moving multiple objects within a Block
2) marquee selecting within a Block
3) snapping to objects

Things I'd like to see on a to-do list:
1) ALT and SHIFT when dropping is great. However, move the object, and it forgets you've ALTed of SHIFTed it. It would be nice if they retained their altered state whilst in the Block
2) The Block stack hierarchy on the page should be reflected in the P&L Gallery. If you move a Block up or down the stack, it doesn't change in the P&L Gallery

The 23.8 update appears to have smoothed things out tremendously.
Good job Team Xara, return to base for debriefing and new orders.