More than 48 contributors participated in this Gutenberg release. It includes a number of valuable improvements.

The use of the new Block appender improves the usability of the Group and Columns blocks.

It’s now possible to set different widths for each column in the columns blocks. The use of a column resizer is planned for a future release.

The release also comprises important writing flow bug fixes that are going to be shipped as part of the WordPress 5.2.1 release.

5.7 🇺🇸

Features

• Support setting a width to the column block.
• Support showing Post Content or excerpt in the Latest Posts block.
• Support headers and footers in the Table block.

Enhancement

• Improve the UX of the Group block by using the individual block appender.
• Support updating images using Drag & Drop.
• Clarify the name of the inline code format.
• Add a usability warning when audio/video autoplay is applied.
• Replace the Page Break block icon with Material version.

Bug Fixes

• A11y:
  • Fix focal point picker input labels.
  • Add role to the copy all content menu item.
  • Add focus style to the document outline panel.
  • Update the save indicator contrast to pass AA.
  • Fix The tabbing order in the Gallery Block.
  • Improve the contrast of the button focus styles.
  • Fixed focus state of pressed AM/PM buttons.
  • Fix the URLInput aria properties.
  • Avoid showing pre-publish panel buttons as links.
  • Fix the focus state of the links shown as buttons.
• Fix RTL keyboard interactions.
• Fix updates to RichText formats not being reflected in the UI synchronously.
• Fix extra line breaks added when pasting from Google Docs.
• Fix copy, paste JavaScript errors in paragraph blocks with locking enabled.
• Fix format buttons incorrectly toggled on RichText blur.
• Preserve the caret’s horizontal position when navigating blocks.
• Case-insensitive search for existing categories.
• Prevent the Code block from rendering embeds or shortcodes.
• Fix the SandBox component usage outside the WP-admin context.
• Fix the  Cover block’s deprecated version attributes.
• Fix the webpack dependency plugin: filename function handling.
• Support watching block.json changes in our build tool.
• Fix ServerSideRender remaining in loading state when nothing is rendered.
• Fix the server-side registered blocks in the widgets screen.
• Show the block movers in the widgets screen.
• Decode the HTML entities in the post author selector.
• Fix inconsistent heading sizes between the classic and the heading blocks.
• Add check for author in post data before meta boxes save request submission.
• Allow blocks drag & drop if locking is set to “insert”.
• Fix Youtube embed styles when used multiple times in a post.
• Proxy the code/block-editor replaceBlock action in the core/editor package.
• Use block-editor instead of editor in cover block.
• Fix block showing an error in Safari when focused.
• Fix small visual error in the active state of the formatting buttons.
• Fix the pinned plugins buttons styles when toggled.
• Set caret position correctly when merging blocks using the Delete key.

Documentation

• Clarify best practices pertaining to Color Palette values.
• Use Block Editor instead of Gutenberg when appropriate in the Handbook.
• Omit docblocks with private tag in the API Docs generation.
• Update docs for selectors & actions moved to block-editor.
• Update i18n docs to use make-json command from wp-cli.
• Consolidate doc generation tools.
• Fix next/previous links issue.
• Webpack dependency plugin: Document unsupported multiple instances.
• Add a DevHub manifest file to allow synchronizing the documentation to the DevHub.
• Typos and tweaks: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

Various

• Support and use the shorthand Fragment syntax.
• Update to Babel 7.4 and core-js 3.
• Upgrade simple-html-tokenizer dependency.
• Pass individual files as arguments from watch to build script.
• Automate the scripts dependencies generation.
• Clean DropZone component’s unused state.
• remove __unstablePositionedAtSelection component.
• Refactor core/edit-post INIT effect to use action-generators and controls.
• Improve eslint disable comments.
• Fix NaN warning when initializing the FocalPointPicker component.
• Export React.memo in the wordpress/element package.
• Improve the specificity of the custom colors styles.
• Preload the autosaves endpoint to avoid request when loading the editor.
• A11y: Add support for Axe verification in e2e tests.
• Refactor the File block to use the block.json syntax.
• Remove redundant duplicated reducers.
• Add integration tests for blocks with deprecations.
• Allow non-production env in wp-scripts build.
• Use React Hooks in the BlockListBlock component.
• Add an e2e test for custom taxonomies.
• Fix intermittent failures on block transforms tests.
• Remove componentWillReceiveProps usage from ColorPicker.
• Add an experimental CPT to be used in the block based widgets screen.
• Split JavaScript CI tasks to individual jobs.
• Remove unnecessary aria-label from the block inserter list items.

Mobile

• Add a first version of the video block.
• Fix the Auto-scroll behavior on List block.
• Fix the list handling on Android.
• Improve accessibility of the missing block.

Performance Benchmark

The following benchmark compares performance for a particularly sizeable post (~ 36000 words, ~ 1000 blocks) over the last releases. Such a large post isn’t representative of the average editing experience, but is adequate for spotting variations in performance.

Version	Loading Time	KeyPress event (typing)
Gutenberg 5.7.0	7.8s	81.89ms
Gutenberg 5.6.0	9.1s	96.52ms
Gutenberg 5.3 (WordPress 5.2)	6.5s	73.55ms
Gutenberg 4.8 (WordPress 5.1)	14.6s	245.21ms

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👏 Kudos to all the contributors. Thank you.

#core-editor, #editor, #gutenberg