What's next in Gutenberg? (February)

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 the next month. Join us in our efforts.

WordPress 5.4

The main priority for this month is to ensure that the version of Gutenberg included n WordPress 5.4 is stable and performant.

  • Fix all critical bugs discovered before and after the WP 5.4 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. 1.
  • Write 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. and document the 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. changes landing in WP 5.4.

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. Content Areas

Work on this major focus is ongoing and is expected to continue iterating over the next months.

  • Work on a separate Edit Site UIUI User interface
    • Switching templates. 19141.
  • Add more Full Site Editing blocks (post navigation 19956, comments form 19954, comments count 19953) and enhance the existing ones (Post Author, Post Date).
  • Continue on the experimental block-based themes.

Global Styles Settings

Global styles are an ongoing project that has two main goals:

  • Simplify how theme authors tweak the visual aspect of the different blocks.
  • Allow the user to override these styles globally in the UI for Full site editing.

The next steps are:

  • Update the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. blocks styles to support the Global styles variables;
  • Define and document the available settings.

Block UI

The first iteration of the new Block UI is expected to land later this month. 19344.

Tightening up

Existing interactions and blocks will be iterated on:

  • Social Icons block update to use the Block variations API. 19887.
  • Resizeable editor (Multi-device preview) 19082.
  • Polishing the Navigation block Projects/31.

While these are our focuses don’t forget you can always help with triage, needs testing issues, good first issues and reviewing PRs

#core-editor, #gutenberg-next