Welcome to reference-theme Discussions!

[tyleralsbury]

👋 Welcome!

We’re using Discussions as a place to connect with other members of our community. We hope that you:

• Ask questions about Theme blocks
• Share feedback on Theme blocks
• Discuss the implementations in the Reference theme
• Welcome others and are open-minded. Remember that this is a community we
  build together 💪.

Shopify's theme experts will be involved in the discussions as well. We are looking forward to speaking with you all about this awesome new feature!

[thomaskimura]

I've heard that the final rollout of flex-sections/theme blocks is likely going to be Online Store 3.0. How will this work for theme partners - are we going to see new OS3.0 themes that merchants would have to purchase separately? OR is this going to be a manual update to newer version of same theme?

[eballeste]

I signed up for the developer preview (eballeste@herocosmetics.us) but this is not the first time I signed up for such things and never get an invite from Shopify until the feature has been released. How can we make this happen?

I have been really vocal about the lack of many of the features promised with this new update like conditional rendering of blocks, nesting and want to jump in ASAP.

[ripgrim]

You can access the new features by creating a development store, then assigning the store type to the block dev preview.

[clauderic]

We have detailed instructions here on how to access the theme blocks developer preview https://shopify.dev/docs/themes/architecture/blocks/theme-blocks/developer-preview

[eballeste]

ohhh woops, missed that, thanks!

[smartdatasoft]

Good features but conditional rendering block needs to apply :)

[ceri-waterscreative]

My concern is the terminology is just going to confuse folks, we already have blocks but now you can have essentially sub-sections which are also called blocks?

[karmoon]

From what I can see in the docs.

There are section blocks, this is the current functionality.

Theme blocks, this new modular approach.

Then there are Nested blocks, I'm not sure if these are referenced as group blocks or nested block.

[ceri-waterscreative]

For Theme Developers the terminology is ok, but when clients come to us asking if a theme supports blocks it's going to be a bit of a confusing conversation.

[PaulNewton]

since section-blocks can be referred to as local-blocks,
theme-blocks|nested-blocks|nestable-blocks could in turn be called global-blocks.

Though I guess that's will be more for devs when talking about implementation or scope, or as shibboleth , more than it would to help merchants know what's what unless it's used in a lot of places.

Describing the current block system in different terms could help sus out what we CANNOT use for the new system: 🚫 dynamic-blocks, 🚫 draggable-blocks, 🚫 OS2.0 blocks, 🚫 predefined-blocks, 🚫 json-blocks.

[stephanie-shopify]

There are section blocks, this is the current functionality.

Correct. These blocks are specific to their section. They are not sharable across sections

Theme blocks, this new modular approach.

Correct. These blocks live in a /blocks folder and can be reused across sections and other blocks.

Then there are Nested blocks

Theme Blocks have the property that they can be nested in one another. This is not the case for today's blocks.

[ceri-waterscreative]

@stephanie-shopify Thanks for the clarification, however I still think that clients are going to find the terminology really confusing..

[PaulNewton]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo

Ambiguous terminology has been a constant bugbear in shopify features.
Probably the worst was "shopify scripts"|"scripts" that in practice could mean app scripttags, theme scripts, order status additional scripts, or checkout scripts.
While "scripts" was meant to specifically be for the ruby scripts , that could run in the checkout , in practice supporting merchants meant when they the word scripts was used you had to stop everything to make sure to clarify "checkout scripts" when there also wasn't any context that is was a request for something that only checkout-script could do or there outright confusion about what javascript/ruby is or isn't; ugh.

"sections" almost had the same issue with static-sections v dynamic-sections but they don't nest inside each other creating a "that section in the middle sections section of the next section" type of language problem; and the JSON template and OS2.0 precontexts helped but dev's still confused at the difference. _group-sections were added and while they "nest" they don't expose editor UI settings to muddy their concept so mechants understand them the first time someone uses the visual-editor with a theme with grouped sections ; though devs have to live with {% section %} vs {% sections %} (plural) 🤮 _.

It's going to be a right pain throughout the ecosystem, for devs education and merchant support , to get a fresh set of overlapping words creating yet another constant unsolvable low level friction in language itself.