What’s next in Gutenberg? (Mid-September 2021)

This 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 in preparation for the WordPress 5.9 Go/No Go that builds on the focus areas for 5.9 and the current Site Editing Scope. 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.


Template Editor

The Template Editor is the editing mode that allows you to create, assign, and edit 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. templates to posts and pages. There are different editors that leverage this editing mode, such as the Template Editor inside the Post Editor or the Site Editor available in the Gutenberg 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. Current focuses include:

Follow along:

Patterns

With the initial rollout of the new directory in WordPress 5.8, there’s a growing need to expand the inserter integration to accommodate broader categories of patterns and the experience of browsing them:

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Global Styles and theme.jsonJSON 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. UIUI User interface

WordPress 5.8 introduced the scaffolding necessary for themes to control how various aspects of blocks render and how the interface is controlled. The natural next step ahead is to develop the user interface that will allow themers to build with these style properties directly in the editor and when allowed, users to interact with these style properties.

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Design Tools

Design tools encompass all tools related to the appearance of blocks and it ranges from colors, typography, alignments, and positioning, to filters like duotone, cropping, and background media creation of shared tools and its consistent application across blocks:

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Navigation Block

With the help of the Navigation block, editing a site’s navigation menuNavigation Menu A theme feature introduced with Version 3.0. WordPress includes an easy to use mechanism for giving various control options to get users to click from one place to another on a site. will be possible with a block interface and within a stand-alone block editor. This will allow users to edit not only the menu’s structure but also its design directly in context and without the need for previewing. The main current focuses in this project are:

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Navigation Editor

The Navigation Editor aims to help expand what’s possible with menus while bringing block functionality to yet another part of WordPress while offering a more modern experience. Current efforts include:

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Other Projects

Apart from these bigger projects, there are a wide arrange of focuses where contributors can help improve Gutenberg, including:

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Areas to be aware of

WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. US 2021:

  • WordCamp US 2021 is scheduled for October 1st, 2021 as an online event. Tickets are free and available here!

FSE Outreach Program:

Hallway Hangouts:

Design:

  • If you would like to see a design exploration on the Inspector SidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme., take a look at this post exploring ways to improve the Document Status and Visibility sections.

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:

  • CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. 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 to @annezazu and @cbringmann for reviewing this post.

#core-editor #gutenberg-next #gutenberg