Blocks are a way to form labeled content groups in order to help you establish hierarchy and context within Ditto projects.
We've often seen teams use blocks as a way to transition over from using copy docs.
👉Quick note: Blocks are only available for linkable groups of text in Ditto, not draft groups of text. For more information on the difference between linkable and draft groups (as well as how to use each), head to our guide to drafting text in Ditto.
There are two ways to create a block: using an existing multi-selection, or by creating an empty block and dragging and dropping.
You can also create a new Block from an existing multi-selection (in the web app or the plugin!).
In the web app, select multiple pieces of text (using shift or command/control), then click "Create block from selected."
In the plugin, select multiple text boxes in your Figma file, and then click "Create Ditto Block."
Mouse over any frame in your project and click the "New Block" button at the top-right corner of a frame. This will create a new block in your frame, which you can label! (Don't worry, you can rename your block at any time.)
You can drag any text items from that frame into the new block. Text items in a block will display horizontally, and you can create as many blocks within a frame as you'd like. Don't worry, moving text into blocks doesn't affect the Figma file it's linked to!
You can always drag and drop to reorder text within blocks, as well as between them.
Blocks are also useful for focusing frames on relevant or new text, especially for projects with large amounts of sample text. You can collapse text items not contained in blocks to focus the text items displayed on a project.
To collapse all of the text items not contained in blocks in a frame, you can click the collapse icon. To open collapsed text, just click the icon again.
Collapsing non-blocked text applies for anyone viewing the project — what you see in your project is what everyone else will! This is also helpful for bringing in stakeholders, so that they are able to more easily navigate a project.
To delete a block, you can mouse over the block and click the "X" icon in the top right corner. Deleting a block releases any text items in the block back into the non-blocked section.
