This post summarizes the weekly editor chat meeting on Wednesday, 2 September 2020, 14:00 UTC held in Slack.
Gutenberg 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/ 8.9
@jorgefilipecosta announced Gutenberb 8.9 was going to be released in some hours.
The big highlight of the release is that Widgets moved out of experiments. On the FSE front, multiple FSE blocks were implemented and are now available for testing in the FSE experience (“Site Editor”). With regards to the widgets screen, more details are shared below.
Aside from these two focuses, Gutenberg 8.9 contains some small new features, multiple bug 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. fixes, and some performance improvements.
Monthly plan updates
Global Styles
The PR that implements the Global styles sidebar on the edit site is now out of the draft state. https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/24250. The PR allows us to have something more concrete to test the global styles mechanism and should probably be merged soon.
Besides the main global styles PR, @jorgefilipecosta said that we have proposals for font family and font-weight picking in https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/24868 and https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/24978.
Navigation screen and Navigation block 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.
Regarding the navigation block task @andraganescu said:
They’re both being worked on. For the Navigation editor (screen) the goal currently is to bring it into a sort of MVP state (outlined in https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/24875 and then take the same steps that we took for the Widgets editor.
Recently the editor got drag and drop into its version of the ListView.
The Navigation block is getting updates via the work on the editor.
One thing that is a bit of a blocker A bug which is so severe that it blocks a release. now is the uncertainty around the “edit in toolbar” feature suggested for the LinkControl, feature which is also present in some of the editor’s interactions.
Widgets screen
Besides the big update that widgets are going to move out of the experimental state on WordPress 8.9, @andraganescu added that call for testing post in progress, and it should soon make it on the make core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. blog (versus network, site).
Full Site Editing
Regarding full site editing @ntsekouras, is experimenting with the query block. Namely, adding tags, order, and some orderby support and transform multiple heading blocks to list or paragraphs.
Monthly plan preview
@annezazu shared a small preview of the monthly plan for September:
- Global Styles & Editor focused APIs: hope is that work on editor focused APIs can be wrapped up in the month ahead.
- Widget 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: launched out of experimental, hoping for lots of feedback, working on an updated design, and have a nice set of a11y Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) issues to work through.
- Navigation Screen: discussing blockers to this being moved out of experimental & working on various items including nesting, a fresh design, enabling edit links in toolbar etc.
- Full Site Editing: focused on milestone #2.
Task coordination
Shared the following update:
Last week I was involved in helping the editor side tasks of WordPress 5.5.1. I reviewed multiple global styles related PR’s and shared some insights in the discussions that were happening. And I proposed the font family and weight picking mechanism.
Next week I will continue the reviews on global styles related PR’s. I will try to take the open PR’s I have to the finish line, and I will try to have a prototype of how to use and load third-party fonts.
- Working on theme.json JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. APIs to control the editor.
- Adding spacing controls to the group block
- Custom CSS Cascading Style Sheets. for the group block (depending on the available time)
- Finalized Widget Screen design iterations.
- Digging into Query block.
- Reviewed and helped iterate on text-only topbar.
@itsjonq shared the following update:
I’m continuing to work on the G2 Components project. Currently focusing on creating (also supporting the creation) of larger pieces.
One of the ways this is manifesting is through prototyping more complete UIs/experience (e.g. Navigation, and soon FSE/Global styles).
Also exploring how G2 components could be used in WP-Admin (and super admin). Another focus to evaluate potential integration into Gutenberg (via `@wordpress/components`).
One of the results from this is splitting parts from the core system so that smaller chunks can be migrated (e.g. Style system)I’ve continued to host Zoom session calls + blog G2 components updates on the blog:
https://g2components.wordpress.com/Also updating the documentation as I go:
https://g2-components.com/As always, open to feedback + suggestions! From UI User interface designs to workflows, to documentation, etc…
I’ve received a few already, which have been lovely.
Shared the following update on the agenda:
- This week: I’ve made progress on adding an initial prototype for the global styles sidebar in the Site Editor. Just today the PR moved from draft state to open for reviews. It still needs some tweaks, but, fundamentally, it’s a candidate for merging. I’ve also been helping here and there with feedback and reviews.
- Next week: keep pushing this work forward.
Open floor
Justify use of “Needs… Feedback”
@isabel_brison wrote on the agenda post:
I’m wondering if we should try/encourage adding comments to justify use of “Needs… Feedback” labels in Gutenberg, as it’s not always obvious which aspect of the issue/PR needs feedback. It would help if the person adding the label elaborated a little on where feedback would be useful.
@jorgefilipecosta said it makes sense that when someone uses a feedback label to also include a comment saying exactly what feedback is needed. As sometimes, the discussions get big passed by many topics, and it is not easy to know what actionable feedback is needed.
@youknowriad said that adding process over process is just raising the bar for contribution. And added that it’s also fine to ask “Why did you add the Needs thing feedback”?
@mapk referred he noticed that many designers do list out the feedback they’re looking for when a design is proposed. @jorgefilipecosta said that we should probably expand that practice to non-design PR’s.
#block-editor, #chats, #core-editor, #core-editor-summary, #gutenberg, #meeting-notes
