This update is considered to be the feature complete for starting the WordPress 5.0 cycle.

Highlights include a block navigation system that can be used to access child and parent blocks within nested blocks easily. It also works as a way to navigate quickly through all the blocks in post. This is a top level affordance that works as a “path” finder and would be the basis for many of the phase 2 layout implementations.

There is also a new block, new style variations for Table, support for video backgrounds in the newly renamed Cover block, accessible date and color pickers, better visibility for style variations, and an “options” modal similar to the former “screen options” to toggle document and meta-boxes on and off.

And this one shows a convenient block for splitting media and text in two columns with mid resizing. In phase 2, this can be the base for internal resizing of columns:

The next step is going to be to freeze the numerous APIs while bugs and outstanding backwards-compatibility issues are addressed.

4.1 is at the release candidate stage, which can be grabbed here.

4.1 🎾

• Implement a block navigation system that allows selecting child or parent blocks within nested blocks (like folder path traversal) as well as functioning as a general fast navigation system when a root block is selected.
• Add a Media & Text block that can facilitate the creation of split column content and allows the split to be resizable.
• Show block style selector in the block inspector.
• Rename Cover Image to just Cover and add support for video backgrounds.
• Add a new accessible Date Picker. This was months in the works.
• Reimplement the Color Picker component to greatly improve keyboard navigation and screenreader operations. 
• Add style variation for Table block with stripe design.
• Add “Options” modal to toggle on/off the different document panels.
• Allow toggling visibility of registered meta-boxes from the “Options” modal.
• Handle cases where a block is on the page but the block is not registered by showing a dialog with the available options.
• Use posts endpoint for reusable blocks allowing them to be edited directly as individual posts.
• Ensure compatibility with WordPress 5.0.
  
• When pasting single lines of text, treat them as inline text.
• Add ability to insert images from URL directly in the Image block.
• Make Columns block responsive.
• Add info prop support to MenuItem and FeatureToggle. Show relevant description text on “view modes”.
• Make responsive embeds a theme option.
• Add direction attribute / LTR button to the Paragraph block.
• Display accurate updated and publish notices based on post type.
• Update buttons in the editor header area to improve consistency (save, revert to draft, etc).
• Avoid horizontal writing flow navigation in native inputs.
• Move toggle buttons to the left of their control handle.
• Add explicit bottom margin to figure elements (like image and embed).
• Allow transforming a Pullquote to a Quote and viceversa.
• Allow block inserter to search for blocks by typing their category.
• Add a label to the URL field in the Publishing Flow panel.
• Use the stored date format in settings for the LatestPosts block.
• Remove the placeholder text and use visible label instead in TokenField.
• Add translator comment for “View” menu label.
• Make YouTube embed classes consistent between front-end and back-end.
  
• Take into account citation when transforming a Quote to a Paragraph.
• Restore ⌘A’s “select all blocks” behaviour.
• Allow themes to disable custom font size functionality.
• Make missing custom font sizes labels translatable.
• Ensure cite is string when merging quote.
• Defer fetching non-hierarchical terms in FlatTermSelector.
• Move the theme support data previously exposed at the REST API index into a read-only theme controller for the active theme.
• Detect oEmbed responses where the oEmbed provider is missing.
• Use “Save as Pending” when the Pending checkbox is active.
• Use the post type’s REST controller class as autosave parent controller.
• Use post type labels in PostFeaturedImage component.
• Enforce text color within inline boundaries to ensure contrast and legibility.
• Add self-closing tag support (like path element) when comparing HTML.
• Make sure autocomplete triggers are regex safe.
• Silence PHP errors on REST API responses.
• Show permalink label as bold text.
• Change the block renderer controller endpoint and namespace from /gutenberg/v1/block-renderer/ to /wp/v2/block-renderer/.
• Hide “edit image” toolbar buttons when no image is selected.
• Hide “Add to Reusable Blocks” action when ‘core/block’ is disabled.
• Handle blocks passing null as RichText value.
• Improve validation for attribute names in rich-text toHTMLString.
• Allow to globally overwrite defined colors in PanelColorSettings.

Bug Fixes

• Fix regressions with Button block preview display.
  
• Fix issue with color picker not appearing on mobile.
• Fix publish buttons with long text.
• Fix link to manifest file in contributing file.
• Fix demo content crash on malformed URL.
• Fix issue in docs manifest.
• Fix media caption processing with the new RichText structure.
• Fix problem with Gallery losing assigned columns when alignments are applied.
• Fix an issue where the Categories block would always use the center class alignment regardless of what was set.
• Fix scroll issue on small viewports.
• Fix formatting in getEditorSettings docs and update getTokenSettings docs.
• Fix padding in block validation modal.
• Fix extra instances of old rich text value source.
• Fix issue with adding links from the auto-completer.
• Fix outdated docs for RichText.
• Fix pre-publish panel overflow issue.
• Fix missing styles for medium and huge font size classes.
• Fix autocomplete keyboard navigation in link popover.
• Fix a text selection exception in Safari.
• Fix WordPress embed URL resolution and embeds as reusable blocks.
• Avoid triggering a redirect when creating a new Table block.

Other Changes

• Only use rich text value internally to the RichText component.
• Ensure multiline prop is either “p” or “li” in RichText.
• Do not use dangerouslySetInnerHTML with i18n string.
• Account for null value in redux-routine createRuntime.
• Extract link container from RichText.
• Allow default_title, default_content, and default_excerpt filters to function as expected.
• Replace gutenberg in classNames with block-editor.
• Restore the order of actions usually fired in edit-form-advanced.php.
• Update REST Search controller to use ‘wp/v2’ namespace.
• Improve keyboard shortcuts section in FAQ.
• Change all occurrences of ‘new window’ to ‘new tab’.
• Conditionally load PHP classes in preparation for inclusion in core.
• Update rich-text source mentions in docs.
• Deprecate PanelColor components.
• Use mock response for demo test if Vimeo is down.
• Adding a bit more verbosity to the install script instructions.
• Document isDefault option for block styles.
• Update docs for new REST API namespace.
• Update shortcut docs with new block navigation menu shortcut.
• Further improve Release docs.
• Updated custom icon documentation links.
• Add all available script handles to documentation.
• Add wp-polyfill to scripts.md.
• Add e2e tests for List and Quote transformations.
• Fail CI build if local changes exist.
• Attempt to always use the latest version of nvm.
• Add bare handling for lint-js script.
• Add support for Webpack bundle analyzer.
• Improve setup of Lerna.
• Update clipboard dependency to at least 2.0.1.
• Recreate the demo content post as an e2e test using keyboard commands.

Mobile Native

• Add mobile SVG compatibility for SVG block icons.
• Fix className style in SVG primitive.
• Split Paragraph and Heading blocks on enter.KEY. Refactor block splitting code on paragraph and heading blocks.
• Add caption support for image block.

Deprecations removed with this version.

#core-editor, #editor, #gutenberg