What’s next in Gutenberg? (June)

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. Please join us in our efforts and let us know in the comments if anything is blocking you from doing so. As a reminder, here’s an overview of different ways to keep up with Gutenberg and the Full Site Editing project. 

Full Site Editing (FSE)

Work on this major focus is ongoing and is expected to continue iterating over the next months. Right now, we’re wrapping up the major work needed to build the technical foundation of this project and are soon moving towards expanding the UX & UI:

We’re watching the Theme Experiments repo as well to see how themers are attempting to build 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.-based themes. Thank you to everyone participating there as it’s a super useful way for us to determine prioritization. 

Follow along:

The high level, important tasks have been split into sections and highlighted on this overview issue.

Global Styles

As a reminder, Global Styles refers to the system that defines and manages global aesthetics allowing overall site styles, theme styles, and blocks to work well together. The Global Styles work remains a major focus for this month. The important tasks for the month are:

Follow along:

You can follow the progress of this focus in this overview issue.

Navigation Screen

The new Navigation Menu screen and Navigation block will continue to be iterated on and polished. In particular, work is being done to create a true drag and drop experience and to explore improving the selection/focus experience (feedback welcome). In an effort to expand the functionality allowed within navigation, work is being done to explore adding different kinds of blocks other than links.

Follow along:

You can follow the progress of this project on this project board.

Refining the interface

The previous releases saw a big UI update for the editor canvas and the inserter. The team will continue to iterate based on the remaining tasks and the user feedback. The remaining tasks here include:

Follow along:

You can follow the progress of this focus in this overview issue

WidgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. Screen

As part of expanding the block editor to other screens in the adminadmin (and super admin), work continues to improve the widget screen including finding bugs in the legacy widget block, ensuring synchronization, and more. Depending on the work done here, the screen should be ready to leave the experimental state and receive additional feedback soon. 

Follow along:

You can follow the progress of this focus by reviewing issues with the [Feature] Widgets label.

Areas to be aware of:

Block & 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 Developers

@aduth just merged this pull request to update default block categories which should be available in next week’s plugin release. This could be particularly impactful for block implementers, since the default categories have changed. For now, please review this drafted devnotedev 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. here as a point of reference for this change. 

Theme Developers

@epiqueras recently broke down all template tags alongside their block equivalent in order to lay the groundwork for Full Site Editing: 

“The idea is for everyone in the community, especially those very familiar with traditional theme development, to contribute to this list. There might be things we are missing. There might be things we could lose.”

Please check out this overall issue and share what might be missing. 

Ways to Help:

While the above items are our focuses, don’t forget that you can always help with triage, needs testing issues, good first issues and reviewing PRs. If there’s anything we can do to make contributing easier, let us know in the comments or in #core-editor chats. While we can’t promise to fix everything, we’d appreciate being aware of any blockers.

#core-editor #gutenberg-next