This post summarizes the weekly editor chat meeting on Wednesday, 22 September 2021, 14:00 UTC held in Slack.
What’s next in 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/? (Mid-September 2021)
@jorgefilipecosta said the post with the goals for the Gutenberg project in September is published and referred that the priorities are the template Editor, Patterns, Global Styles 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., the design tools., and the 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./navigation editor work.
As a follow-up @ntsekouras brought attention to an experiment to trigger some discussions – a Patterns explorer, asking people to share their thoughts.
Project Updates
Mobile Application
Shipped
- Improve error handling for embed block
- Improve Reusable Blocks inserter UI User interface
Fixes
- Fix image block height and border regression A software bug that breaks or degrades something that previously worked. Regressions are often treated as critical bugs or blockers. Recent regressions may be given higher priorities. A "3.6 regression" would be a bug in 3.6 that worked as intended in 3.5.
- Fix back icon color in dark mode
In Progress
- Additional Embed block improvements
- GSS Font size, line height, colors
Components package
Shipping
- Completed a migration Moving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies. away from the createComponent function. This simplifies the process of adding new components to the library, using the more straightforward View component.
- Following up on the recently expanded contributor guidelines, we simplified the structure of the guidelines and added a table of contents.
In Progress
- @youknowriad merged a PR that introduces a navigation component to the Global Styles sidebar 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., which moves us closer to the updated designs. We’re experimenting now with a revised Navigator component that may provide greater flexibility for the design.
Navigation Editor
Lots of work happening on priority items. Thanks to everyone who is contributing so much work.
• REST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/. interactions have been improved and more issues identified.
• Started looking at ways to add links in Bulk.
• Using Theme JSON to control the block in the editor has been ruled out.
• Another Hallway Hangout is on the cards – dates/times to be confirmed.
Task Coordination
Hallway hangout for adoption pathways for FSE with Marcus & Dave, continue amplifying the current block theme switching exploration (please check it out!), did some light triage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors., and shared a core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. editor improvement post on the new Widgets Group block!
- Query Pagination with `flex` layout(#34876, #34897).
- Pass the search value to inserter, when clicking Browse All(#34912).
- Delayed loading state of SSR component(#35033).
- Pattern Explorer experiment(#35006).
For the next week, the plan is to continue iterating on the design and address the remaining follow-ups we have thinks like changing the border of the input field from a gray to slightly different gray changing the dimension of inputs from 30px to 40px, changing the focus look on the range control.
Will keep supporting @jorgefilipecosta and other folks working on the @wordpress/components package, including most of the work that is being done on the new Global Styles sidebar.
Open floor
Responsiveness
Roman Axelrod asked the following:
It was mentioned earlier, but… At time moment, core editor doesn’t provide options of setting different styling rules for each device / breakpoint (Preview modes: Desktop, Tablet, Mobile).
Right now, the rules are global. For example if I set padding: 60px to Group block from the right sidebar of the editor, this rule is going to appear on Desktop and Mobile.I curious if we are going to have the same functionality that all popular page builders have? Usually they provide a list of breakpoints and ability to “overwrite” styling rules of previous breakpoint. It gives ability of adapting the design by requirements.Is this something that we can expect soon? Are we going to have something like this in 2021?
@jorgefilipecosta said he thinks that is not something on the roadmap for 5.9, but allowing to control how things look depending on the dimensions of the place where they are rendered is something that will end up existing.
Custom Fields
Roman Axelrod asked the following:
Are there any plans or ideas of using Custom Fields in core blocks?
For example, imagine the situation where I have 20 pages. All pages have a “Hero” section that contains title, text, button on the left and image on the right.
The design is the same but the content is different and unique for each page (kind of a template).Now let’s say, after I built these 20 pages, we realized that the Heading block should be 5px bigger.
How should I fix that? It might be annoying to go page by page and update the font-size of each heading.As a reference, Elementor page builder provides this kind of option – they call it “Dynamic Content”.
I thought that the block-template-parts of FSE will solve this case. But this is still not there. Are there any thoughts/discussions about similar cases?
@jorgefilipecosta answered the following:
Hi Roman, maybe the solution to your issue is to define a CSS Cascading Style Sheets. variable that represents the size. Theme.json provides a mechanism for declaring the css variables, and then instead of using 5px as value you use the css variable as the value. Changing the variable will then change the size in every place.
Roman followed up asking about how non-developers would be able to change those values. @jorgefilipecosta said that If one wants to allow a user to change a CSS variable, one could do it by registering a custom sidebar to change the variable. Maybe one day core offers something that automatically renders a UI where users could change variables registered using theme.json, but it is not part of the road map for now.
Developer Hours online
@bph made a big announcement during the core editor chat:
There will be a make core post with more info, this is just a heads-up, about a trial initiative to hold “Developer Hours online” every other week, with a group of Gutenberg developers, a short topic and then answering attendee’s Block and Theme building questions, with screen sharing of code and follow-up post. Depending how the trial goes, we might expand it. If you want to be part of that initiative let me know or comment on the post.
#block-editor, #chats, #core-editor, #core-editor-summary, #gutenberg, #meeting-notes
