What’s next in Gutenberg? (June 2021)

This monthly status update contains 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 June. Please join us in our efforts and let us know in the comments if anything is blocking you from doing so.

How to follow along with Gutenberg:

Here’s an overview of different ways to keep up with Gutenberg and the Full Site Editing project. There is also an index page of Gutenberg development-related posts and a Site Editing Milestone overview issue that breaks down the upcoming work into more concrete next steps.

WordPress 5.8 focuses

With WordPress 5.8 Beta 1 planned for June 8, the priorities for the month heavily focus on stabilizing, testing, 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. fixing, and documenting the features recently merged in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., which can be followed in the WordPress 5.8 project board. However, design and development in other Gutenberg areas continue as well, and contributions are welcome!

The remaining tasks for 5.8 include:

• Audit correct editability of content with FSE blocks
• Use theme mods for templates and template parts
• Polish some Query 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. aspects, including:
  • Prevent editing post content by mistake in a query loopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. by disabling editing content by default.
  • Clarify the “inherit query” setting and set its default value according to the context.
  • Rename the Query and Loop blocks.
• Write Dev Notes

Widgets Editor

Work on the block-based Widgets Editor is a continued focus. The main efforts target stabilizing and documenting the editor and the customizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. block editor, as well as deciding whether the Widgets Editor should be enabled by default.

If you want to help us test the block-based Widgets Editor, drop by the Widgets Editor Call for Testing and report on your experience!

Follow along:

You can find more information about the current work in progress in this tracking issue, as well as on this project board. Moreover, you can join #feature-widgets-block-editor in WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. for future 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. Editor-focused meetings.

Navigation Editor

Like the Widgets Editor, the Navigation Editor aims to help expand what’s possible with menus while bringing block functionality to yet another part of WordPress and offer a more modern experience. Current efforts include:

• Continue defining Navigation Editor architecture.
• Provide a better way to disable/enable Navigation block features for the Navigation editor by defining allowed inner blocks in the Navigation block via the block supports mechanism.

Follow along:

You can follow the progress of this project on this project board or review the new Navigation Editor tracking issue and join #feature-navigation-block-editor in WordPress.org Slack.

Full Site Editing

Work on this major focus for phase 2 is ongoing and is expected to continue as a big-picture goal for 2021. Apart from all the features making it into 5.8, this is the status of the different FSE areas and their upcoming work:

Milestone 1 – Site Editing Infrastructure and UI

• As the Template Editing Mode is landing in 5.8, efforts focus on testing and stabilizing this feature. If you would like to help, check the current FSE Outreach Program round focused on Template Editing Mode!

Milestone 3 – Global Styles

• The first version of Global Styles has been merged in core, and focuses need to be revisited. Any relevant update will be posted in this GitHub issue on demand.

Milestone 4 – Theme Blocks

• With most theme blocks merged in core, it’s time to polish the Site Logo block’s design and bring feature parity with the Image block.
• Similarly, the Site Title and Site Tagline blocks require varnishing to bring feature parity with other text blocks.
• Because Post-related blocks (Post Title, Post Date, etc.) behavior varies depending on the context they are in (post, template, or Query), it would be nice to make their descriptions context-aware.

Milestone 5 – Query Block

• With great power comes great responsibility; because the Query Block is so powerful, contributors are making sure it lands in the best status possible in 5.8 as mentioned in the “WordPress 5.8 focuses” section above.

Further work on the Query block not limited to 5.8 includes:

• Refine the Posts List block (Query block variation)
• To improve the user experience when inserting and modifying an existing Query block, creating a UI that suggests patterns that are contextual to the currently selected block

Milestone 6 – Navigation Block

• The main focus within the Navigation Block is to support non-li inner blocks generating valid, semantic, accessible markup. There is a discussion regarding the best approach for solving the navigation markup challenges, and contributors are moving forward with having a different markup in the frontend and the editor.
• Add an option to render the block using a classic navigation data source.

Follow along:

You can follow the progress of this project with this overview issue showing key milestones for site editing. For each major milestone, there are related issues you can follow if you want a more granular look at each next step.

If you’re interested in testing Full Site Editing, check out the FSE Outreach Program to learn more. If you have questions about Full Site Editing, check out this recent effort to offer answers.

Areas to be aware of

WCEU 2021

WordCamp Europe 2021 is scheduled for 7 to 9 June 2021 as an online event and will include several sessions related to Gutenberg, such as:

• Full Site Editing (Discussion Panel)
• A walkthrough of Full Site Editing (Workshop)
• The Future of Themes in WordPress (Discussion Panel)
• Blazing fast block development (Talk)

Make sure to register if you haven’t already!

Theme Developers

• The Themes team held a “Universal Themes” Hallway Hangout. Check out the summary and recording of the event to know more about this upcoming way to build themes that work both with the Site Editor and the Customizer as a fallback, not simultaneously, if the former is not available.

Calls for testing

• Help test the Widgets Editor for WordPress 5.8.
• Help with the seventh FSE Outreach Program call for testing by building a polished portfolio. This has been extended to June 16th to give folks more time to respond!

Block Patterns

• Since Gutenberg 10.7, block patterns displayed in the inserter are fetched from the WordPress.org Pattern Directory. This opens the door to having a big amount of wonderful patterns available in the inserter, which will require iterating on the pattern insertion experience. For more updates on the Pattern Directory, stay tuned for Block Pattern Directory updates and check the most recent design iterations for the Pattern Directory.

Ways to Get Involved

While the above items are our focuses, don’t forget that you can always help with triage, testing issues, good first issues, and reviewing PRs. In particular, if you’re interested in helping with triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. but don’t know where to start, there’s a course on Learn WordPress for how to do triage in GitHub! Check it out and join us.

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.

Meetings to join:

While you can view all meetings here, here are specific meetings to join depending on your interest. Remember that you need a WordPress.org slack account to participate:

• Core Editor weekly Wednesdays @ 14:00 UTC in #core-editor focused on all things Gutenberg.
• Block Themes meeting twice monthly on Wednesday @ 16:00 UTC in #themereview focused on preparing for Full Site Editing.

Thanks @andreamiddleton and @cbringmann for reviewing this post.

#core-editor #gutenberg-next #gutenberg