This update is packed with improvements and fixes. It introduces the Plugin API that allows pinning items for quick access in the editor header. There are many refinements to the UI and consistency of various block tools. Toolbars now expose the keyboard shortcuts used to access most features. It also includes significant improvements around API support — lifting limits to various endpoints, capabilities, conditional UI, etc. Dive into the changes below to find all the details.

2.9 🍂

• Add support for pinning plugin items in the main editor header. This is an important part of the editor Plugin API seeking to both grant plugins high visibility while offering users a consistent and flexible UI that can scale better.
• Add shortcut tooltips for main toolbar.
• Add remaining RichText shortcuts for formatting toolbar. Display them in tooltips.
• Display the block toolbar and controls below the block on mobile.
• Add automatic handling of focus for RichText component.
• New reusable component: FontSizePicker. Example use in paragraph block.
• Query for all authors with an unbounded per_page=-1 request. Makes sure no users appear missing.
• Make the editor canvas friendly towards colored backgrounds. Improves support of nested structures over backgrounds as well.
• Remove block alignment from paragraph block with deprecation handling.
• Ensure contributors can create tags and manage categories.
• Exclude private blocks from the slash autocompleter.
• Close the post publish panel only when the post becomes dirty.
• Add toggle to set fixed widths in Table block.
• Surface and style the resizing tool in Table block.
• Iterate on table block front-end styles.
• Transform into the correct embed block based on URL patterns.
• Allow resetting the permalink by saving it as empty.
  
• Add text alignment options to Subhead block.
• Move Heading block alignment options from the inspector to the toolbar.
• Writing Flow: consider tabbable edge if no adjacent tabbable.
• Implement Button as assigning ref via forwardRef.
• Avoid adding terms when tabbing away from the tag selector field.
• Add a max-height to Table of Contents menu.
• Make any iframe embed responsive in the editor.
• Update PostExcerpt component to use TextareaControl.
• Show block remove button on empty paragraph blocks.
  
• Introduce wp:action-publish and update corresponding UI to reference it. Use wp:action-publish to determine whether to display publish UI.
• Use wp:action-assign-author to indicate if user can assign authors. Fixes issues with author selector not appearing under certain circumstances.
• Permit unbounded per_page=-1 requests for Pages and Shared Blocks. Removes limit on how many items are retrieved.
• Permit unbounded per_page=-1 requests for Categories and Tags.
• Improve written descriptions of core blocks.
• Show caption and description settings in featured image modal.
• Make sidebar toggle button open the block inspector if a block is selected.
• Avoid setting font-style when using dropcap.
• Preserve image ID in raw handling.
• Add a data store to manage the block/categories registration.
• Avoid change in RichText when possible. It prevents unnecessary history records.
• Stop unnecessary re-renders caused by withColors. Also solve memoize problems.
• Move components from the blocks to the editor module.
• Move editorMediaUpload to the editor module.
• Move the editor settings into the editor’s store.
• Change subhead block to subheading.
• Add cache to getUserQueryResults and avoid authors rerender on every key press.
• Rename isPrivate → supports.inserter in Block API.
• Fix multi selection with arrows + shift.
• Fix caretRangeFromPoint for Firefox.
• Fix a PHP Notice in REST API responses.
  
• Fix broken example in withAPIData README.
• Fix issue with UrlInput autofocus when used in a custom block.
• Fix issue with high contrast indicator in Edge.
• Fix and update block fixture regeneration.
• Fix gallery width to match width of other elements.
• Fix Fragment render error on empty children.
• Fix ServerSideRender bug with Columns block.
• Fix block icon alignment.
  
• Fix absent editor styles in Classic block.
• Fix state variable name in core-data.
• Fix generating admin schemes styles.
• Fix captions on resized images.
• Fix case where link modal would hide on rerender.
• Fix paste with selection/caret at start or end.
• Fix appender height to match paragraph block.
• Use core-blocks prefix for class names.
• Prevent classname override when passing className as argument.
• Remove document outline from the sidebar.
  
• Framework work to support React Native mobile app explorations:
  • Refactor the Code block .
  • Refactor “More” block.
  • Extract edit to their own file (part 1, part 2).
• Use targetSchema of JSON Hyper Schema to communicate sticky action.
• Tweak targetSchema Response for sticky posts.
• Load additional REST API files if controller is defined.
• Restore the wp-blocks stylesheet for backwards compatibility concerns.
• Add documentation for title and modalClass props in MediaUpload.
  
• Copy edits to theme extensibility.
• Add a lint rule for enforcing ellipsis use.
• Use a postcss plugin to generate the admin-schemes styles.
• Move date module to packages maintained by Lerna. Move element to packages maintained by Lerna.
• Extract dom package and make it maintained with Lerna.
• Move blocks raw handling tests to test/integration folder.
• Remove skipped tests which fail, enable those that pass.
• Add missing unit test for received entity records.
• Update Notice README.
• Update wordcount package to prevent crash.
• Update dom-react to 2.2.1.
• Update React to 16.3.2.
• Update packages to pass npm audit.
• Upgrade rememo dependency to 3.0.0.
• Updates the minimum required version of npm to version 6.0.0 or greater.
• Update testing-overview document.
• Update package-lock.json for fsevents.
• Avoid tail-ing the PHP 5.2/3 build logs.
• Remove Docker compose deprecated parallel option.
• Remove fsevents from optionalDependencies.
• Remove %s from Lerna publish message.
• Deprecate isExtraSmall utility function.
• Add npm update to build script.
• Make lerna a dependency rather than a devDependency.
• Support adding a human-readable deprecation hint.
• Drop features slated for 2.9 removal.
• Introduce the common build folder to be used by all modules.