Google has announced the release of Blockly 1.0 for both Android and iOS platforms. It is a significant update for the open source library meant for building block visual programming which was introduced five years ago. The library is aimed at making it easier and faster for developers to code as it offers drag and drop editor. And with the latest update, it has been made easier than ever as devs can now use Blockly natively on Android and iOS to create their mobile apps.
To start off, you will get the standard Blockly UI on your mobile device which means you will feel right at home if you have worked on the web version before. There are custom blocks, layouts, and toolbox categories along with extensions, variables, functions, and mutators. Blockly 1.0 even features support for internationalization including Right-to-Left (RTL) languages. The default code generator of the library is capable of generating code in PHP, Python, JavaScript, Dart, and Lua programming languages but there are third-party code generators as well which support other languages. And even though the update is mainly aimed at mobile platforms, there are a number of changes aimed at the web version as well. These include improved support for Internet Explorer (IE) and Windows 10’s Edge browser with full support for IE version 10 or higher. There are more structured APIs and improvements to touch support along with performance and testing. Google has also made improvements to the cross-platform development where all blocks can now be defined using JSON. This means devs can now use a single set of block definition across the web, Android, and iOS platforms instead of using it individually for each of them.
If you are eager to try out Blockly 1.0, you can do so straight away. Google has also released iOS Codelab which is a learning center with learning materials and code samples for devs to get started with using Blockly on iOS. A similar hub for Android will be “coming soon” but there are no words on the time frame. While Blockly was introduced to encourage kids to learn to code by making it a fun experience, it has also been used for various significant projects including the likes of Scratch Blocks, Code.org, littleBits, and MIT App Inventor.