>>> 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.