Xara Designer Pro+ 24 Released.

[Egg Bramhill]

I've no idea what BLOCKS are about ......

I'm with Ian re blocks.

[Acorn]

I'm with Ian re blocks.

Egg, in a nutshell (not an acorn's I hope):

Think of a Web Block (WB) as a page-wide container:

Each WB immediately shares with a 480px Variant.
Each WB has Autofit to Page > Width

• Good
  
  • The WB always fits the page width.
  
  
• Bad
  
  • You cannot fit WBs side-by-side.
  • The autofit is not perfect so you are always chasing your tail from one view to another.

Each WB has Push set and hidden away as a menu option.

• Good
  
  • The WB (and contents) can be moved as a whole <-- Green container controls
  
  
• Bad
  
  • The Variant WB is forced into the same stack order, leaving no opportunity for designer variation.

You cannot knife and fork into a WB or create one.

• Bad
  
  • There are still Arrange menu options that are always visible but unavailable.

There are two types of WB.

• Bad
  
  • You don't know which until you you discover --> a FlexGroup <-- has a Purple edging.

Think of a FlexGroup (FG) like a text line for shapes instead of words; a column layout that doesn’t explicitly declare the number columns, just automatically creates them based on the shapes' widths - too wide and things wrap onto the next row.

The power of either WB is the means to drop something new into it or drag one out.

• Bad
  
  • Hard to control the merging of WBs and FGs. Their separation is not simple.

Xara is gaining a bit more functionality with each version delivery. The WB had a BlockBackground and has also now gained a VideoBackground. So WBs are becoming miniature stacks or layers.

The concept is simple and powerful.
The implementation is ropey. Object selection and alignment is chuggy and too much relies on yet more menu options.

Rescue the FG from a WB and copy into a normal website and you can decouple from variant sharing.
Add back Autofit and Push and you get a lot of the WB functionality back.
Put FGs into a Table and you get the means to have WGs side-by-side and gain row and column shifting.
The downside is things become dramatically nested and so getting to a shape is a chore.

Acorn

[Egg Bramhill]

Thanks for the detailed explanation Acorn. From this I think I'll keep to my current practice of avoiding blocks. Sounds like a good simple idea that transforms into a load of work instead. I'll wait until I stop seeing endless threads re block issues.