Block Editor Open Beta Announcement

[ZoeLubitz1]

We're excited to announce the new Block Editor will be going live to open beta on December 16th. This new feature is a simplified content creation tool that allows educators to build high quality Canvas pages without needing to leverage HTML. 

This initial release, though still under active development, will be available in all beta environments. We're eager to have you explore this reimagined content creation experience in Canvas and share your valuable feedback. While we have exciting plans for further enhancements before its official production launch, your input during this beta period will help shape its future and ensure an exceptional user experience. The Production release will be ready once we finalize key features and improvements. 

How do I try the new Block Editor?

Beginning December 16th, CSMs can turn the feature option on in beta for any customers who request access. Please reach out to your CSM directly. Once Block Editor is enabled in your beta instance, head over to a course to start building a new page.  Additional information on how to use Block Editor along with updated resources can be found in the Block Editor feature user group.

How do I join the Block Editor feature user group?

Once your CSM grants your beta access to the Block Editor, they will send you a form with which you can request to join the Block Editor Feature User Group. This is the place to find the latest updates and resources for the Block Editor, and to share your insights, feedback, and ideas.  We recommend subscribing to updates in the group to stay up to date, as development will be ongoing. 

Which Block Editor features are available now? 

Sections and Blocks for Content Creation:

Blocks are individual objects that can be added to a template, or used to build a page from scratch. Block types include: Rich Content Editor, Button, Icon, Media, Tabs, and Dividers.

Sections are pre-made, but fully customizable elements, like a navigation bar, or Hero section with a course image. You can also add a “Knowledge Check” and use select New Quizzes questions to check for students’ understanding, right from your course page. Question types you can use include True/False, Multiple Choice, and Matching.

Additional Features:

• Preview on all screen sizes
• Context-specific toolbars for each block or section type
• Color Picker Contrast Checker: Instantly identifies whether the selected colors meet accessibility contrast standards, showing a clear pass/fail status.
• Dynamic Text Contrast Adjustment: Automatically selects and applies the most accessible text color for optimal readability against the chosen background.

What’s Coming Next?

Planned for the Production Release (early 2025):

• Dark mode support
• New block types including LTI block, carousel, flip cards, accordion
• Accessibility Checker
• Additional templates
• Enhanced accessibility, including more seamless screen reader compatibility 
• Full documentation and guides

These, and any other new features will be released on a rolling basis.

If you have additional questions, please see this FAQ document. We can’t wait to hear what you think of the Block Editor.

[TrinaAltman]

Thanks for the update, @ZoeLubitz1 . When this is released to production systems in early 2025, what will the default release state be? Specifically which of these Feature Option states will be the default in production systems:

• Disabled (with no lock/unlock option)
• Enabled (with no lock/unlock option)
• Disabled/unlocked
• Disabled/locked (this one is unlikely, I know, but I am listing it just to be thorough in the four possible options)

We handle each release state differently, so need to know specifically how it will be set when it is released for our planning.

Also, your update indicates the production release will be "early 2025" and the Block Editor FAQ page says, "Please check back for updates on when Block Editor will be release to Production." but the older Update on the Block Editor page still indicates "We plan to go into production on January 18 as a Feature Preview". It would be good if a noticeable edit could be added to that page for folks that are/were still checking that one for updates, like myself. (A shout out to @dbrace for letting us know about your new page!)

Thank you.

[ZoeLubitz1]

Hi Trina, Thanks for your comment!

Updating my reply on Friday 12/13: The feature state will be "Disabled, unlocked." But importantly, you'll see in Beta that the Block Editor is still optional even if the feature is enabled. There's a screen that asks you whether you want to use Block Editor or the Rich Content Editor. Screenshot below.

Regarding the date for the production release, this is also TBD. I'll try to clean up the various blog posts so we don't confuse anybody. Thanks for calling that out 🙂

[paul_fynn]

Watching with anticipation as this develops and really interested to see how this pans out in practice (and an example of where we'd prefer to issue a central template):-

How does the knowledge check work in Block Editor?

As you build a knowledge check, you will be prompted to select an existing New Quiz from your Canvas course, then select one of the supported question types from that quiz. That question will be added to the Block Editor Page for students to use as a self-check for comprehension.

The million dollar (or million participations) question for us is whether we will see knowledge check attempts reflected as student participations in New Analytics ?

A secondary question is whether we would be able to run knowledge check as a graded summative activity, or if that still needs to run through New Quizzes ?

[dpchristianson]

Is there integration yet with Canvas Studio? If not, when is it on the roadmap?

[FOULONIne]

Hi! 

Will we be able to add embeds?

Lucidboards, Panopto video's, ....

[Nhadley12]

We just had this activated, and I can see the URL shifting to utilize the block editor in Beta, but it never actually opens the page to edit. It remains just the standard page. Any ideas? The page refreshes as below: 

[AndrewDwyer]

@Nhadley12 

Same behaviour here when i create a page from within a module, however, if you go to  course pages  + page and create from there the Block Editor options should appear

[jason_cfeideas]

Just learned of this feature today from our local LMS admin - a couple of points of feedback (if anyone is still reading these comments)

I think the "Use the RCE" option should not utilize an acronym that will be unfamiliar to the average user. "Use the default Rich Content Editor" is maybe more UX-friendly. 

Again, the use of "hero section" is webdev jargon not the language of your end user. Maybe "header section-two column" or even simply "Page section-full width image"

The color contrast accessibility check on text does not give the user information on what the "fail" is (accessibility - presumably WCAG AA)  and what contrast ratios would be needed to "pass" for the various use cases (also - perhaps 'insufficient' rather than 'fail' - the word fail carries special baggage in the educational context).

[GarthLategan]

Will there be the option to customaries our own icon in a block e.g. uses our company style guide icons

[jonna_radegard]

Hi, what about course links? If you for example want to link an image, a tab or a word to a specific course element, will you have to copy the url beforehand or what? Will course links be available? in the future? (soon)

[RaeJobst-GU]

I have had a look at the Beta version, and want to support some of the comments already made here.

The option to "Use the RCE" is going require us to really educate our academic staff on this term, as it really isn't commonly adopted.

I note that there will be an Accessibility Checker coming - this is crucial because once you use the Block Editor, you never have the option to then access the RCE, and therefore lose options such as access to the HTML Editor and Accessibility Checker.

Integration with other tools such as Studio is critical.

Adding blocks with buttons labelled with things like "Go to Groups" implies pre-population of links to groups within a course, but this doesn't happen, so manually adding links could be easily missed.

Will it be possible for us to customise the blocks so they are consistent with our branding?

[EspenSmith-USN]

• Thank you paul_fynn for great questions about the knowledge check!
  One more: Will course instructors be able to see any results/statistics from the quiz-questions?
  Now, the instructor sees and takes the quiz just like the students do.
  
  
• Thank you FOULONIne for the basic question about LTIs.
  Panopto, for instance: When will the small "RCE"-blocks that can be used in Block Editor contain the 'External Tools'-tool?
  
  
• Thank you jonna_radegard for the really basic questions about links:
  When will course links be available in Block Editor?
  The block editor is just not usable at all before this is in place.
  
  
• And one question of my own:
  When will we be able to change the names of tabs?
  Tabs is a great block, but it is very useful to be able to change the names.
  Especially since new tabs get other names than the default ones (Tab 1, Tab 2, New tab, New tab, New tab...)

[BradMoser]

How can I join the Block Editor User Group? I've searched the Groups tab and don't see this as an option. Thanks! 

[DavidSchlater]

The images that come with the block editor are up to 24 MB - that is too big for a web image. Also they don't have descriptions. The blocks need to be optimized for size and fully accessible when you add them.

[AndrewDwyer]

Re Knowledge Checks

1) There is a typo highlighted below in the knowledge check section

2) When doing one of the knowledge checks with a matching question type, when I click the check button I get the "Bzzzt, try again" incorrect message, despite getting the correct answer. This seems to be only matching questions

I am not sure if anyone else has experienced this

3) Only loads 10 quizzes from the course to choose from?  If you search for a quiz not in the list of 10 (but in the course) it doesn't find any 

[EleganKramer]

Good morning! I'm interested in testing this feature in beta and I don't know who our CSM is. How can I go about finding our CSM?

Thanks in advance!

[cms_hickss]

1) Can't change text color.  I noticed in some of the options (like the Navigation Section) that you can change the background and border colors, but you can't change the text color that goes on that background, so it creates a failure in the contrast ratio.  Will you be adding the ability to change text color?

2) Adding Links to the Navigation Section [and Hero Section with Navigation]. You currently cannot link to the Announcement Tool or a specific announcement [same for Modules] in the Navigation Section without knowing the URL. Is this going to be updated with a search function or are faculty expected to save the page, navigate to the announcement (or tool), grab the URL from the URL bar, navigate back to the page, click edit, paste the URL, and then click save again?

[aimee_garten1]

If I build a page using Block Editor in Beta, can I export that page and use it in production? Has anyone tried? Thanks!

[HannahAtkinson]

I would love to see

1. a document block, where course documents can be linked or uploaded (such as PDF, WORD, or pptx). Or perhaps add it to the media or image blocks?

2. the ability to add/edit questions directly in the Knowledge Check section, as well as the ability to add more than one question in the same knowledge check section without having to add multiple section blocks

3. an embed code block (a block where I can paste the embed code for anything I have an embed code for. For example, H5P activities, slide decks, YouTube videos, etc.)

[DanicaStitz]

Greetings,

I love the potential of this feature, but there are some kinks to work out still. Although I have only tinkered a bit, out of the gate I have noted that

1. you can only drag new block items into vertical spaces (side by side), rather than horizontally.
2. sometimes errors adding media, i.e. png images.
3. inserted tabs are not customizable.  A new tab, for example, cannot be retitled from "new tab".
4. a copy block section in the page would be helpful.
5. options to hyperlink within a course (not just external) would be good too.

Thanks for reading!

[evdoxia_liatiri]

Hi everyone,

Great discussion here! Here is a summary of issues after my testing, most have been raised already but if anyone can help or offer more information, please do!

1. Icons are limited - need to add more or allow to add emojis maybe
2. From FAQs: "You’ll need to build the content in the editor that you select for that page initially (RCE or Block Editor)", - so no way to redo a page created on RCE using block editor? It would be a deterrent if on production we were still able to use it ONLY when creating brand new pages.
3. No option to add an internal link on the buttons rather than external link.
4. Failing to upload an image when using the image block - maybe that's just me. 😂
5. Cannot see the option to delete the text block unless I click on it, open it, close it and then delete - or right click on it. Again, maybe I'm doing something wrong.
6. No way to point to a specific module other than through a link, it would be a useful feature.
7. No custom blocks or templates for now. Would be a very useful feature!

Thank you!

[PhilipWallace]

Dear All,

The Customer Success Manager of my institution's Canvas has kindly enabled the Block Edtior in the Beta environment of Canvas.

About ten days ago I set up a course in the Beta environment and worked on this with Block Editor. This course space appears to have disappeared.  I understand from the Customer Success Manager that the Beta installation is only for testing and resets ever week.

Is there any way around this? If I create a new course space in the live Canvas environment, can I edit this in the Beta environment of Canvas with block editior?

Any feedback appreciated.

With regards,

Philip

[JamesSekcienski]

@PhilipWallace 

You can create a course on production and it will the be in Beta the following week for you to work with in Beta.  However, any changes you make within that course will still get reset each week to match the current state in production.  Unfortunately, there isn't a way to prevent the weekly reset from affecting the Beta environment.

[leward]

@PhilipWallace , You can export your course on beta to a file and then import it after the reset.  I haven't tried this with the block editor content, but I can't think of a reason that it wouldn't work.

[PhilipWallace]

Thank you kindly. This appears to have worked.

[kthompson2]

How do we edit text in the block editor? We are playing with block editor in the beta today and have brought it blocks and sections. I see the option to edit the text on a button, but not the actual text. I feel like I am missing something obvious. Help is appreciated!

[jsowalsk]

@kthompson2 I see only a way to edit text:

[kthompson2]

@jsowalsk In the video showing the block editor when they click the text a box pops up and there's a rich content editor and they can edit freely. That box doesn't pop up for me. 

[jsowalsk]

@kthompson2 Would you be able to show me what you mean?

[kthompson2]

@jsowalsk Here's a quick screencast. Thanks for looking! 

[jsowalsk]

@kthompson2 Do you have a pop-up blocker turned on? Have you tried incognito mode? Could be a caching issue.

[dserna1_jh]

I also have this same issue but when I click on the block of text I want to edit and then press the space bar, I am able to edit the text. 

[kthompson2]

@jsowalsk @dserna1_jh  - I clicked the box then pressed the space bar and it popped up! I don't know how you figured that out! So is that how it will work for teachers? I don't think that is communicated in the video or anywhere else. 

[dserna1_jh]

@kthompson2 , honestly it was just from clicking around. I could not find this info anywhere. Hopefully it's just a temporary bug!

[jsowalsk]

@kthompson2 @dserna1_jh Same. Since double clicking didnt work. Only spacebar or enter but it seems to remove the text behind while you are working on it.

 

[hesspe]

Hi,

I've been trying to add a section between two existing sections.  When I create a new section it's always added to the bottom of the page, apparently inattentive to where in the page I clicked before adding the section.  If I try to drag one of the sections from the bottom to where I want it, it appears to move but returns to the original position on release.  I've tried this in both Chrome and Firefox.  Any suggestions?

-Peter

[jsowalsk]

@hesspe I see what you mean. It keeps going to the bottom of the page and cant move it around right?

 

[hesspe]

@jsowalsk 

>> It keeps going to the bottom of the page and cant move it around right?

Sounds the same.  Always nice to find it's not just me.