Perch and Perch Runway 2.8

Perch and Perch Runway 2.8 is now here. If you have a Perch 2 or Perch Runway license this is a free update and can be downloaded from your account.

The headline feature in this release is Perch Blocks. As we explained when announcing the feature last month, Perch Blocks means you can offer your content editors a more freeform way to build up pages, selecting from multiple templates. You maintain control over the markup that is output. It’s a great balance of giving clients flexibility while still maintaining the quality of the output and the content that is stored.

Perch Blocks is also in the API meaning that it is available in our first party apps, and for you to use when developing your own apps using the API. Take a look at our video showing how to use Blocks in Blog to create a photo essay style post.

In Perch Runway you can use Blocks in Collections, these two features can be used to create incredibly flexible content. We can’t wait to see what you do with them.

Other features in Perch 2.8

Along with Blocks, Perch Repeaters have become part of the API and can be used in Apps including Blog.

We’ve made an update to the default MarkItUp editor. If you use this editor be sure to update it as it also has changes in order for it to work inside Blocks templates.

With Perch Templates now becoming fairly complex it’s handy to be able to add comments. We’ve added a special Perch Comment feature. They look similar to an HTML comment (and your editor will probably treat them as such) but have an extra * character.

<!--* template comments *-->

Read the full update notes and don’t forget to let us know what you think and show off the things that you create using Blocks in our Show and Tell forum.