Brian Coords was using the Gutenberg Site Editor and Kevin Geary was using Bricks and ACSS. They were each to have 45-50 minutes to recreate a pre-selected part of the Ghost.org home page.

Brian began by introducing a custom block theme that he prepared for this stream. It was his starter theme where he added colors and maybe some spacing and other presets into theme.json.

I was surprised as I imagined that people would begin by picking a theme, but what we saw is that a custom theme is something a pro site builder might do. This was an “ah ha” moment that explains why pros using the Site Editor don’t understand the frustration others express … because they are working with the Site Builder as a theme developer or power user and using a totally different workflow.

Kevin showed how fast you can go with Bricks together with ACSS. He also talked about how a workflow using classes and CSS variables makes it easier to style consistently and to make changes down the road.

I think that people who were unfamiliar with Bricks and ACSS were just as surprised about this workflow as people who saw building with a custom block theme there were surprised by that approach to the Site Builder. So, there was an element of “what you are used to.” All in all, it was a very interesting session that was hosted by Mark Szymanski and Matt Eastwood.

Here is a tutorial from the Meta Box team on how to add custom fields to WooCommerce products and show them on the front-end using Bricks. There is a video version near the top of the article.

The second part of Dave Foy’s look at Bricks addons is out. If you are wondering about the top Bricks addons then this video gives you an overview of the top features of each.

People often ask about CSS frameworks. In this video Dave Foy gives a short and to the point comparison of ACSS and the Core Framework. He also discusses his favorite 3rd party Bricks template options.

Bricks 1.9.8 beta has been released. Some of the features of the new version include a CSS Variables Manager, support for dynamic data in the Code Element, the ability to duplicate pages and templates, and the yellow dot notification helper when there is a change has been added to the Style Tab and Breakpoint Settings Indicator.

Here is a nice video by Paul Charlton showing how to create image effects using image masks. The tutorial uses the Bricks Builder, but the concepts apply for any builder.

This is a very simple and nice tutorial showing how to add some simple animations in Bricks.

Here is a short video from Paul Charlton on formatting dates in Bricks.

Bricks 1.9.7 was just released. This release focuses on security enhancements. There is a minor security fix, but mostly it focuses on hardening. The announcement gives a full rundown on the changes and how to upgrade, as extra steps may be necessary.