Hello Block Builders!
The Block Factory is a tool Blockly has published for a long time to help you create custom blocks using blocks. In recent years it has not been fully updated to keep up with changes to Blockly & the JavaScript ecosystem such as the availability of plugin fields or esmodules. The legacy Block Factory is only compatible with version v10 and earlier of Blockly, since it does not have support for plugin fields like the angle, multiline text, and colour fields which are no longer shipped with core Blockly in v11+.
Starting today you can try out the new Block Factory tool which is linked on our
plugin showcase site. You can also read more about how it works and how to migrate your block definitions from the old tool
here.
The new tool includes support for plugin fields and it also lets you specify if you load Blockly through `import` statements or script tags, since the format for these is slightly different. If you're the owner of a plugin field, you can even
add support for your field to the block factory so that others can easily create blocks with your field.
Currently the tool does not support the other features of Developer Tools such as the workspace or toolbox configuration. We will not be deleting the old tool at this time so you can keep using them at the old location if desired.
I hope you enjoy the new Block Factory and find it useful! If you find problems with it, please file an issue against blockly-samples. If you have a feature request, feel free to file that too, but do note that our team capacity for taking on feature requests is decreasing as I will be out for maternity leave for the near future.
Best,
Maribeth