annezazu 7:43 pm on February 1, 2021
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What’s next in Gutenberg? (February 2021)

This is a monthly update containing the high-level items that GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ contributors are focusing on for February. Please join us in our efforts and let us know in the comments if anything is blocking you from doing so.

How to follow along with Gutenberg: 

Here’s an overview of different ways to keep up with Gutenberg and the Full Site Editing project. There is also an index page of Gutenberg development-related posts and a Site Editing Milestone overview issue that breaks down the upcoming work into more concrete next steps. 

Preparations for WordPress 5.7

This release will include versions 9.3 to 9.9 of Gutenberg! The WordPress 5.7 Must Haves project board includes issues that need attention in preparation for the WordPress 5.7 release. Many contributors will be spending the month of February working on bugs and regressions to be fixed for inclusion in WordPress 5.7. As a reminder from this originally planning post, these are the main focuses: 

  • Update WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. to include current releases of the Gutenberg pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party.
  • Gutenberg: ship additional blocks, refine the UIUI User interface, add tools for themes and design, and continue working on the widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. screen.
  • Continue work on auto-updates and jQuery.

Finally, a number of issues have been gathered in this issue for Dev Notes (more information on these notes here). Dev notesdev note Each important change in WordPress Core is documented in a developers note, (usually called dev note). Good dev notes generally include a description of the change, the decision that led to this change, and a description of how developers are supposed to work with that change. Dev notes are published on Make/Core blog during the beta phase of WordPress release cycle. Publishing dev notes is particularly important when plugin/theme authors and WordPress developers need to be aware of those changes.In general, all dev notes are compiled into a Field Guide at the beginning of the release candidate phase. are typically published along with the first Release Candidate which is currently scheduled for February 23rd, 2021. 

Global Styles

Global Styles refers to the system that defines and manages global aesthetics, allowing overall site styles, theme styles, and blocks to work well together. Currently, the focus remains on tightening up and fixing the flows, with the goal of preparing a V1 that can land as a core patchpatch A special text file that describes changes to code, by identifying the files and lines which are added, removed, and altered. It may also be referred to as a diff. A patch can be applied to a codebase for testing. early in the 5.7 cycle:

Of note, the parts of Global Styles that will land in 5.7 will solely concern the theme.jsonJSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. structure and won’t impact users.

Follow along:

You can follow the progress for this overall system in this overview issue and by reviewing the Global Styles label. 

BlockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience.-based Widget Editor

Work on the Block-based widget editor (Widgets Screen) is a continued focus for the month ahead. The purpose of this effort is to bring the flexibility of block-based editing to the widgets and customizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. screens. You can find more information about the current work in progress in this exploratory issue for bringing blocks to the customizer and this summary issue for overall items for a block based widget editor experience.  

Follow along:

You can follow the progress of this work on this project board and you can join #feature-widgets-block-editor in WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ slackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. for future widget screen focused meetings.

Full Site Editing

As with the prior months, work on this major focus for phase 2 is ongoing and is expected to continue as a big picture goal for 2021. Work this month will include the following focus areas:

Milestone 1 – Site Editing Infrastructure and UI

Milestone 5 – Query Block 

  • Query Block toolbar controls revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. to make it easier to show the content you want.
  • Exploring the idea of a Query Block builder UI to scale the experience for advanced users. 

Milestone 6 – Navigation Block

Work on the Navigation Block is an ongoing effort and focus for February. An overview of the work in progress can be found in the Navigation Block tracking issue.

We’re still watching the Theme Experiments repo to see how theme developers are building block-based themes. Please continue to share there and know we appreciate it.

Follow along:

You can follow the progress of this project with this overview issue showing key milestones for site editing. For each major milestone, there are related issues you can follow if you want a more granular look at each next step (example from Query Block).

As a reminder, if you’re interested in being a part of testing Full Site Editing, check out the experimental outreach program to learn more. 

Areas to be aware of:

Block & Plugin Developers

Thanks to collaboration between @jessplease and @gziolo (and others!), a new package was created in this PR to make it even easier for developers wanting to develop their own third-party templates for the create-block package. You can read more about this addition on the @wordpress/create-block-tutorial-template reference page.

Theme Developers

A PR landed over the last month to load content in iframeiframe iFrame is an acronym for an inline frame. An iFrame is used inside a webpage to load another HTML document and render it. This HTML document may also contain JavaScript and/or CSS which is loaded at the time when iframe tag is parsed by the user’s browser. for the site editor experience. This should help get rid of any CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets. bleeding and allow a theme stylesheet to be dropped in the editor without any necessary adjustments. For theme authors this is something to be aware of as it should make block theme authoring easier!

Finally, there’s a comprehensive overview issue covering updates to experimental-theme.json that’s worth digging into to stay up to date.

Navigation Screen Work

Navigation screen work will be continuing this month but is a lower priority currently than the other areas listed above. A design iteration is underway as part of this effort. You can follow this work here and you can expect it to be a higher priority in the months to come. 

Ways to Get Involved:

While the above items are our focuses, don’t forget that you can always help with triage, needs testing issues, good first issues, and reviewing PRs. In particular, if you’re interested in helping with triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. but don’t know where to start, there’s a new course on Learn WordPress for how to do triage in GitHub! Check it out and join us. 

If there’s anything we can do to make contributing easier, let us know in the comments or in #core-editor chats. While we can’t promise to fix everything, we’d appreciate being aware of any blockers.

Meetings to join:

While you can view all meetings here, here are specific meetings to join depending on your interest. Remember that you need a WordPress.org slack account to participate: 

  • Core Editor weekly @ 14:00 UTC in #core-editor focused on all things Gutenberg. 
  • Block-Based Themes meeting twice monthly at Wednesday @ 16:00 UTC in #themereview focused on preparing for Full Site Editing. 

#core-editor #gutenberg-next

#gutenberg