After 5 years of development, Google has finalised their ‘open source library for creating block-based coding experiences’, Blockly. The finalisation has resulted in Google launching Blockly version 1.0 for Android and iOS.
Blockly is at its core a very simple way to add a way to code to your app, allowing for code generation in JavaScript, Python, Dart, PHP, and Lua from a simple drag and drop interface. Google has standardised the UI to make it easy to use, and allowed for custom blocks, toolbox categories, and layouts as well as adding in functions, variables, mutators, and extensions.
Previously we’ve seen Blockly used in a number of ways including the App Inventor application that Google ended up open-sourcing and is now maintained by MIT. The Blockly code was also introduced into a new coding app for kids which we saw at last years ‘Youth IO‘ where kids built and programmed a robot using Scratch – a version of Blockly built by MIT for Android.
With the release of Blockly v1.0, Google has focused on native mobile apps. They’ve still added updates to the web project over the last few months and will continue to do so. They’ve also improved support for Internet Explorer and Edge support; including announcing that Blockly is fully supported on IE10+.
If you’re interested in checking out Blockly you can view an intro video below, or head over and check out the project on GitHub.
