What’s new in Gutenberg? (28 August)

With the date of the WordPress 5.3 betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. release approaching, testing 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/ is increasingly more critical. Any help testing the 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 is much appreciated as it may avoid bugs in a future WordPress beta release.

The Gutenberg 6.4 release brings some interesting highlights.

The Cover 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. got two new significant functionalities: the ability to be resized and the ability to use a solid color as a background instead of a video or an image.

Recently we added an APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. that allows themes and plugin developers to create block styles using just PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher calls. In this release, we continued the improvements to the block styles and added the ability for the users to select their preferred default style per block. Each time the user inserts a block, the preferred style is automatically applied.

Another relevant improvement in this release is the introduction of the “Typewriter experience“. We hope this makes writing more “fun” and overall more comfortable, especially on mobile.

6.4 🇫🇷

Features

• Add the option to select the style that is automatically applied.
• Add the option to resize Cover Block .
• Allow directly setting a solid background color on Cover block.
• Add list start, reversed settings.
• Add a help panel to the inserter available in all blocks.
• Typewriter experience.
• Add circle-crop variation to Image block.

Enhancements

• Add overflow support inside block switcher.
• Update GitHub action exit codes.
• CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Data: return updated record in saveEntityRecord.
• Latest Posts Block: (no title) instead of (Untitled) for a post without a title.
• Remove borders around inserter items for blocks with children blocks.
• Add disabled block count in the block manager.
• Writing Flow:
  • Add splitting in the quote block.
  • Allow undoing of patterns with BACKSPACE and ESC.

Experiments

• Widgets Screen:
  • Fix: Blocks are too close together.
  • Add Button block appender.

New APIs

• Add callbacks to ServerSideRenderer to handle failures with custom renderers.
• Add the block example API and use it for inserter and switcher previews.
• Enable an optional namespace parameter for hasAction & hasFilter .

Bug Fixes

• The duplicate button appears even if the block is not allowed.
• Double scrollbar appearing in full-screen mode.
• RichText: ignore selection changes during composition
• Missing default functions as props in BlockEditorProvider.
• Button block does not center on the editor.
• Guard block component against zombie state bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority..
• Add truthy check for the Popover component onClose prop before calling it.
• Make InnerBlocks only force the template on directly set lockings.
• Check to ensure focus has intentionally left the wrapped component in withFocusOutside HOC.
• Correctly transform images with external sources into a gallery.
• Block toolbar appears above sidebar on medium viewports.
• Basecontrol name undefined triggring eslint-plugin TypeError.
• Image flickering & focus lose on resizing.
• Add get_item_schema function to WP_REST_Widget_Areas_Controller .
• Empty Classic Editor inside innerBlock fatal error.

Various

• Update re-resizable dependency
• Use mixins in button styles instead of media queries.
• Fix performance tests with the introduction of the navigation mode
• RichText code improvements: #16905, #16962.
• Scripts:
  • Improve the way test files are discovered.
  • Improve recommended settings included in the package.
  • Use the SCSS shared stylelint-config-wordpress config.
• Ignore the WordPress directory in stylelint.
• Fix: edit post sets some default block appender styles.
• Build: remove global install of latest npm.
• Project automation:
  • Rewrite actions using JavaScript.
  • Fix: Add first-time contributor label.
  • Fix: Add milestone.
• Remove unused CSS from ColorPalette component.

Documentation

• Add examples for the lockPostSaving and unlockPostSavingactions.
• Add guidance for adding/proposing/suggesting new components to the wordpress/components npm package.
• Add section about updating package after new releases.
• Add ESNext examples to format API tutorial.
• Document server-side functions that allow registering block styles.

Mobile

• Reset toolbar scroll on content change.
• Extract caption component.
• Not use ListEdit.
• Hide replaceable blocks when adding blocks.
• Make tapping at the end of post always insert at the end of the post.

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 6.4	5.6s	66.36ms
Gutenberg 6.3	5.4s	66.87ms
Gutenberg 5.3 (WordPress 5.2)	6.0s	75.79ms

#core-editor, #editor, #gutenberg