Toolbox Survey

[Abby Schmiedt]

Hi Everyone,

We are looking at possibly updating some parts of our toolbox and I wanted to know what features or changes you would find most helpful? 

Thanks,

Abby

[Yasser Benfoughal]

Maybe not THE toolbox feature, But I'd love the ability to have a separate toolbox that we can create on each block. That way we can use the new toolbox Blocks only when we place our main block from the original block. It would facilitate a lot of work. I know we can use mutators to achieve complex blocks but this would be a lot easier
.

[Coda Highland]

A programmatic API would be nice. I don't mind having XML fragments for the individual blocks, but having to rewrite the entire toolbox XML to add top-level categories is irksome, and building an XML string out of my data structures only to have it deserialized back into other data structures seems a bit silly for dynamic categories. I've hacked around this in my own project by building a dynamic category manager, but it seems like something that ought to be a builtin.

/s/ Adam

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[Baskar Puvanathasan]

Toolbox Search

Our toolbox has gotten large enough that we have to leverage search to find the blocks. We currently monkey patched Bockly to implement a rudimentary search. It would be nice to have an extension/hooks mechanism into the life-cycle of the Toolbox so it would be easier to implement.

Thanks,

Baskar

On Monday, April 13, 2020 at 2:38:56 PM UTC-4, Coda Highland wrote:

A programmatic API would be nice. I don't mind having XML fragments for the individual blocks, but having to rewrite the entire toolbox XML to add top-level categories is irksome, and building an XML string out of my data structures only to have it deserialized back into other data structures seems a bit silly for dynamic categories. I've hacked around this in my own project by building a dynamic category manager, but it seems like something that ought to be a builtin.

/s/ Adam

On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 12:00 PM 'Abby Schmiedt' via Blockly <blo...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Hi Everyone,

We are looking at possibly updating some parts of our toolbox and I wanted to know what features or changes you would find most helpful? 

Thanks,

Abby

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[Jim Ewald]

+1. 

Our toolbox XML contains nearly 600 blocks in over 80 categories. We have been experimenting with embedding toolbox metadata in the block definitions to help us reconfigure the toolbox content. it would be helpful to be able to dynamically change the content of the toolbox without having to rebuild it. Being able to add, remove and reorder block and category elements; refresh the toolbox in place would be on our list. If we are going to head off the reservation, implementing the toolbox with JSON definitions would eliminate the awkward dance we do now with this ginormous string definition.

On Monday, April 13, 2020 at 11:38:56 AM UTC-7, Coda Highland wrote:

A programmatic API would be nice. I don't mind having XML fragments for the individual blocks, but having to rewrite the entire toolbox XML to add top-level categories is irksome, and building an XML string out of my data structures only to have it deserialized back into other data structures seems a bit silly for dynamic categories. I've hacked around this in my own project by building a dynamic category manager, but it seems like something that ought to be a builtin.

/s/ Adam

On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 12:00 PM 'Abby Schmiedt' via Blockly <blo...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Hi Everyone,

We are looking at possibly updating some parts of our toolbox and I wanted to know what features or changes you would find most helpful? 

Thanks,

Abby

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[Mervyn Zhang]

I want to define the toolbox custom total，include the dom tree and styles。and can control the flyout's content and other control

Here I have a https://react-ts-k1thkj.stackblitz.io/，here is the resource: https://stackblitz.com/edit/react-ts-k1thkj

[TianQi Hu]

Toolbox search is great.Our toolbox has thousands of blocks

[Laxmikant Sharma]

+1 for Toolbox Search

[Licorne Magique]

Hi,

could it possible to create toolbox thanks to different xml file?

My idea is to have a 'core' blocks, and then you call different file with different blocks, and then you have to refresh only the section you want.

I hope I'm clear...

[Beka Westberg]

Hello, I know this is a bit off-topic but have you tried using the updateToolbox function? Does it suite your needs or is there some other functionality you're looking for?

--Beka

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[Francisco Caetano]

I'm not sure if this is already possible or not but having the full control over the toolbox/flyout UI via React Components would be really handy

[José Luiz]

I don't know the exact moment I've been noticed by email of this discussion, but a few days past I opened a feature request on blocky github page just about toolbox search, I even attached a print with a great design of thst search box on the page, you guys would like to see it:

https://github.com/google/blockly/issues/3851

[Simon]

José Luiz, I think your toolbox has great style! Are you using an existing "theme" in blockly or have you redone the CSS yourself? I really like the ability to put icons next to the category name!

[José Luiz]

Thanks Simon! Our blockly is currently using Zelos renderer that I believe it's responsible for the most visual gain here. To put the icons there, we did some css digging and put an effort so we could get that result.

Happy you enjoyed it!

[Licorne Magique]

Hi Beka,

I already used it for a multi toolbox selection, for beginners/standard/expert levels.

But my idea is to use external toolbox (instead of implement it in index.html like you do) defined elsewhere in a file. And also be able to construct the tree of the toolbox by adding multi files, and so multi toolboxes in a one 'big'.

Hope it's clear :-D

Le vendredi 24 avril 2020 19:41:15 UTC+2, Beka Westberg a écrit :

Hello, I know this is a bit off-topic but have you tried using the updateToolbox function? Does it suite your needs or is there some other functionality you're looking for?

--Beka

On Fri, Apr 24, 2020 at 1:44 AM Licorne Magique <prt...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

could it possible to create toolbox thanks to different xml file?

My idea is to have a 'core' blocks, and then you call different file with different blocks, and then you have to refresh only the section you want.

I hope I'm clear...

Le lundi 20 avril 2020 00:41:47 UTC+2, Laxmikant Sharma a écrit :

+1 for Toolbox Search

On Friday, April 17, 2020 at 6:32:30 PM UTC-7, TianQi Hu wrote:

Toolbox search is great.Our toolbox has thousands of blocks

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[Beka Westberg]

Ah ok that makes sense! So would each category have a file or would each toolbox? I think having it at the category level might be cool because that would make them shareable.

Thank you for sharing your idea! I think that sounds really interesting =)

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[Abby Schmiedt]

Hi Everyone!

Thank you so much for all the feedback and discussion. I would definitely love to keep hearing any thoughts that you all have!  I thought I would provide an update on what we are currently planning for the toolbox.

1. Add Support for External Toolboxes. We want to provide an easy way for developers to create external toolboxes and use them with Blockly. We anticipate part of this will be creating a toolbox interface that will allow external toolboxes to work seamlessly within Blockly.

2. Shareable Toolbox Categories. We want to provide an easy way for developers to share categories and toolboxes with each other. Part of this is providing easier ways to define the toolbox and categories using JSON.

3. Make it easier to style and change the toolbox. This category is a bit vague right now, but I think this includes: 

   1. Having the ability to add classes to categories and other components of a toolbox/flyout (labels, categories, icons)

   2. Organizing the toolbox in a way that would make it easier to override parts of the toolbox functionality without having to completely rewrite it. 

4. Give developers more control over the toolbox. Add the ability to disable categories, show the toolbox, and hide the toolbox. 

These are still a work in progress so they are subject to change, but just thought I would let everyone know what we are working on!

Let me know if you have any questions, 

Abby

[Simon]

Hello,

All of this is really great, I'm looking forward to the update!

Simon

[Licorne Magique]

Hi,

I'm working on toolbox and what about your work on it?

I'm trying to inject json toolbox but I cannot find any example...

I'm trying to create a modular Blockly for my BlocklyDuino. In the idea you select a specific material, in its own folder (with js defining & generator file) there's a small json toolbox defined, so the toolbox on workspace add this toolbox part. I'm ease with xml but I don't know if it's possible in json.

Many thanks.

[Abby Schmiedt]

Hello!

The toolbox documentation has been updated with a demo on how to inject a json toolbox. 

Let me know if you have any other questions. 

Cheers,

Abby

[Licorne Magique]

Yeah, I saw it but I did not succeed using JSON...and in the Blockly Developer Tools I cannot export workspace in JSON but only in XML.

I think it's simple but I don't know how to inject json data, for XML you use BLOCKLY_TOOLBOX_XML function, anything like this for JSON?

Thanks.