Preliminary Roadmap for 6.0 (Gutenberg Phase 2)

Yesterday, WordPress 5.9 Joséphine was released with the help of hundreds of contributors and achieving a big milestone for WordPress. It’s now time to start thinking about next steps and the general scope for 6.0. As before, this is meant to be a high level overview of the different areas of focus, not an exhaustive list.

The overall aim is to consolidate and expand the set of customization tools introduced in 5.9 for creating themes with blocks, with a special focus towards usability and refinement. This new release could be considered a conceptual wrap for 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/: Phase 2. This doesn’t mean the customization phase would be concluded with it, but that its main features would have been established.

Editor

The introduction of the site editor marked a big milestone but also just a first step in the journey. There are various limitations that need to be lifted and features that didn’t make the cut that need to be revisited. We are also going to be learning a tremendous amount from users now that the initial work is out in the world to be experienced.

  • Refine the information architecture and template browsing experience. There’s work to be done to better organize the experience of interacting with the site editor, global styles, templates, and navigation as a whole. (36667)
  • Improve template creation (aiming at never showing disconcerting empty states) and allow the easy creation of more specific templates (i.e: category-$slug). The selection of new templates is artificially constrained right now in the interface. Opening that up should better express the power of the site editor as a web creation tool. (37407)
  • Expose site structure as “navigation” outside the navigation 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.. This is an important aspect to not limit site navigation editing exclusively to the site canvas, which for many reasons can be initially hidden from view. (36667)
  • Introduce browse mode to be able to conveniently follow links to different parts of the site. Conversely, the template editor that spawns when editing posts or pages also needs to establish better flows with the site editor. There’s a larger theme of connecting pages and templates to be explored. (23328)
  • Embrace style alternates driven by 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. variations. This was teased in various videos around the new default theme and should be fully unveiled and presented in 6.0. One of the parallel goals is to create a few distinct variations of TT2 made just with styles. (35619)
  • Improve post settings design and organization. The 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. has gone without many updates for a while and could use improvements in clarity and design.
  • Complete the scope of global styles. Introduce easy export & import; support for revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision.; etc. (27941
  • Remove coupling of templates to specific themes. This is crucial for properly embracing the power of block templates. Switching themes should not cause the disappearance of your modified templates. This is also fundamental for offering more granular combinations instead of complete theme swaps, the ability to add new set of templates (relevant for plugins that introduce new templates), or changing individual parts of a site. (See also.)
  • Explore more advanced drafting and scheduling for the site editor. Some of this work is meant to happen more in depth during Phase 3, which will include more focus on editorial flows, but there’s still some paving steps to implement. (29575, 29388, 31456)
  • There should also be some room for some minor back to basics around the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. writing experience and further improvements to performance and usability. Areas to keep an eye on are the reliability of undo/redo, keyboard interactions, multi-selection, etc.

Patterns

It’s also time to expand the usability of patterns as a main ingredient when it comes to building pages and sites, now that most of the infrastructure has been established.

  • Prioritize pattern insertion on template building. This is a proposal to make patterns more central to the experience of creating theme templates and pages. (31153)
  • Simplify registration of patterns for themes. This might take the shape of a patterns folder with file headers that are automatically registered. All in all, it should be super easy for themes to provide a collection of patterns or to specify starter content as patterns. (36751)
  • Introduce page patterns for page creation. This has been on the horizon for a while and we should have enough building blocks to tackle it properly. It’s also an occasion to improve upon and align with the new “explore” modal that connects with the patterns directory.
  • Use patterns as possible transforms for offering “layout” options. Inserting new patterns is just a start, but often you want to change existing content or shapes into new ones. Patterns have some of those mechanisms but they need to be better presented and embraced. (27575)

Blocks

  • Finalize scope of navigation block and its overlay rendering. The navigation block introduced in 5.9 contains a whole world of customization and opportunities that needs to continue to expand and improve. In addition to the block itself, several flows need to be refined around transporting and initializing block menu data.
  • Introduce various new blocks to power the display of comments on themes. (34994, 38107)
  • Allow the featured imageFeatured image A featured image is the main image used on your blog archive page and is pulled when the post or page is shared on social media. The image can be used to display in widget areas on your site or in a summary list of posts. to be an attribute of other blocks (like Cover, Media & Text, etc) to expand what designs can be achieved.
  • Allow Quotes and Lists to have child blocks. Some of the current limitations of the writing experience arise from this constraint. (25892)
  • Improve the Table block. There’s a good design direction to finally implement. (32400)
  • Explore the viability of inline tokens. This has come up repeatedly in the context of rendering dynamic strings (such as current date) in rich text blocks.
  • Migrate default block styles into proper style attributes. Continue the work put into global styles by making all systems understand each other.
  • Pick up the work done for a Table of Contents block.

Design Tools (33447)

A lot of progress was made in 5.9 around consolidating the set of design tools and introducing new ones to address major gaps in the experience and providing block authors with simpler ways to register them. For 6.0 there’d be a concerted effort around tightening consistency, introducing more responsive capabilities, and expanding the Supports & Elements APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways.. Another important goal is to continue to make it easier for third-party blocks to adopt these tools.

  • Layout:
    • Address confusions and shortcomings of layout features (including mindbenders like “inherit layout”). (28356)
    • Explore more convenient direct manipulation for height and width (alignment distribution) of blocks.
    • Incorporate more definitive responsive handling (min/max containers) into the current flex-based tools. (34641)
  • Typography:
    • Introduce responsive fonts with good defaults. (33543)
    • Add a Web Fonts API connected with global styles. (37140)
    • Explore paragraphs with indents and justification with hyphenation as global styles settings.
  • Elements:
    • Introduce support for customizing block Captions.
    • Investigate hover / focus effects and related problems.

Gradual Adoption

Full block themes are at the avant-garde of the WordPress evolution, but work continues to happen to improve how all themes can interact with blocks and make use of the new tools gradually and at their own pace.

  • Continue to adopt theme.json configuration for non-block themes as it aims to simplify and consolidate support for block properties and their capabilities.
  • With the “focused template part” editor established there are new opportunities for non-block themes to start incorporating specific areas for blocks using the site editor interface in a more gradual way, when ready to do so. (37943)
  • Utilize what we have implemented for the navigation block and site structure as the interface to eventually replace the navigation screen.
  • Explore the flows for creating some dynamic templates with blocks (for example, just the archive), similar to the custom page templates support in classic themes.

Please, help define the work to be done by joining the conversations listed in the issues above or giving feedback!

#6-0, #gutenberg, #gutenberg-next, #release-roadmap

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:

Follow along:

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.

Follow along:

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:

Follow along:

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:

Follow along:

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:

Follow along:

Other Projects

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

Follow along:


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

What’s next in Gutenberg? Site Editing status check (Late July-August 2021)

WordPress 5.8 is already here, an exciting release marked by the inclusion of many Full Site Editing features that have been big-picture focuses in recent times. Because of this important achievement, in contrast to normal monthly updates, this post seeks to review the status of Full Site Editing and summarize the next high-level focuses within 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/ Phase 2.


Full Site Editing is the lighthouse goal for phase 2 of Gutenberg. As such, it’s good to remember it is a collection of projects that allow site editing with blocks, bringing powerful capabilities for a smooth editing experience.

WordPress 5.8 includes some of these Full Site Editing projects and features; while some of them will continue as ongoing focuses for subsequent Gutenberg releases (⚒️), others can be considered stable and enter a maintenance phase (✅)

Without further ado, let’s look at the current status of the milestones that have guided Full Site Editing work in the last months and the updated scope for Site Editing.

Site Editing Infrastructure and UIUI User interface

The Site Editing Infrastructure and UI provide foundational work for the rest of FSE projects, mainly in the Site/Template Editor, Template parts, and the numerous APIs that support work around Full Site Editing.

The first two iterations of the site editor milestone introduced editing 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. themes and all their template files. The ongoing third one offers the possibility of creating custom block templates in classic themes and is available in WordPress 5.8 for those themes that opt-in to the site editing experience. Work will continue to finalize the Site Editor naming and placement: the current Site Editor as we know it 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 may evolve for better navigation flows and interactions.

Thanks to feedback from different FSE Outreach Program testing rounds, the next focus for site experience and tooling improvement include:

Overview Issues: ✅ Part 1, ✅ Part 2, ⚒️ Part 3

Global Styles

Global Styles comprises two major areas that fall underneath the global styles umbrella: centralized theme configuration and an interface for manipulating visual aspects of blocks globally.

Theme configuration absorbs things like declaring color palettes, presets, different supports and settings, and toggle on or off the available block design tools (typography, colors, dimensions, etc.). All of this can be managed through the 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. configuration file and is one of the key features available in WordPress 5.8. After a few iterations and open testing, this feature is considered stable and moved to a maintenance phase.

The other major part of global styles is the user interface to make edits to blocks globally. With theme.json in place, the next release cycle will have the Global Styles UI as one of its main focuses, allowing users to tweak the theme easily. Color handling will be an important focus, not only to better theme switch but also to seamlessly integrate color palettes with patterns.

⚒️ Global Styles Overview Issue

Theme Blocks

To support the theme building needs outside of the template and template parts infrastructure, there was a need to create many new blocks centered around theme functions. WordPress 5.8 brings several of these blocks, from Site Title, Site Tagline, and Site Logo that allow users to configure site settings with blocks, to the post-related blocks such as Post Title and Post Date, to be used inside 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. to display post data.

Although new theme blocks may be added as the need arises and the existing ones will receive incremental upgrades, the basics of this milestone are complete.

Theme blocks Overview Issue

Query Loop Block

Among the theme blocks, the Query Loop Block has been a significant area of the site editing focus in the past months, deserving its own milestone. Taking some of the block APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. infrastructures to the limit, such a powerful block has proven challenging to expose at a user level. As a result of the feedback collected in the FSE Outreach Program, the block has been renamed to clear confusion, and usability enhancements have been implemented before launching it in WordPress 5.8.

With the Query Loop foundations in place, the next iterations will seek to ease the user interactions and flows, even more, thanks to two fundamental Gutenberg tools – block patterns and block variations. The former will continue to help set the inner block structure and content. In contrast, the latter will present the powerful Query Loop’s features in the form of preconfigured blocks and consolidate similar blocks to use the Query Loop Block as their underlying mechanism.

Query Loop Block Overview Issue

Navigation Block

Along with the Query Loop Block, the Navigation Block is another theme block that stands out as a project in its own right. This block has seen great improvements in the last few months, from improved overlays to responsive menus. New blocks are available as well, such as the Home Link block. Shortly, we will see the Navigation block house whole new kinds of blocks thanks to the recent frontend markup adjustments that allow blocks other than links in an accessible way.

Because of its key role in building rich theme blocks, the Navigation Block will be one primary focus during the next WordPress release cycle. Apart from more blocks being available inside the Navigation Block, customization options – such as configuring dropdown behavior or adding fullscreen variants – are an area that seeks improvement. These customizations should be design-driven due to the multiple layouts nested navigation menus can have.

⚒️ Navigation Block Tracking Issue

Site Editing Gradual adoption

Full Site Editing represents a new paradigm in site and theme building in the well-established WordPress ecosystem, and as such, providing the right tools is key to gradual adoption. Tools like the Widgets Editor and Navigation Editor bring block editing capabilities to traditional features that can’t take full advantage of their native block counterpart implementation.

WordPress 5.8 brings the power of blocks to both the Block Widgets 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.. Users will be able to add blocks in 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. areas, add widgets and blocks with live preview, and schedule and share directly from the Customizer.

Because blocks can now be added to widget areas, developers are encouraged to phase out their widgets in favor of blocks, which are more intuitive and can be used in more places. Developers can allow users to easily migrate a Legacy Widget block containing a specific widget to a block or multiple blocks. 

On the other hand, the Navigation Editor has also seen its share of iterative improvements in the last months. Together with the Navigation Block, it will remain an ongoing focus for the next WordPress release cycle.

Widgets Editor Tracking Issue

⚒️ Navigation Editor Tracking Issue

Smoothing block interactions

As mentioned with regards to Query and Navigation blocks, the complexity of the editor increases as site editing capabilities are introduced with advanced block structures and customization options. This highlights the need to expand our APIs and interactions — which are well suited for simple block structures — to better support container blocks.

To address some of this, the List View introduced in Gutenberg 10.7, and WordPress 5.8 aims to help navigate these advanced structures more efficiently and should continue evolving further in the future. Internally, the List View is powered by a component available in the post editor List View and advanced blocks like Navigation; all features and blocks having a list of blocks will benefit from the improvements made to this component.

Another challenging editing experience with the increased number of container and inner blocks is adjusting parent block settings when editing a child block.  Users often need to switch between different child and parent blocks to change settings like layout or positioning. In turn, it is necessary to explore Toolbar absorption mechanisms that allow parent blocks to expose their toolbar on their children.

Patterns

At this stage, it is no secret that block patterns represent considerable potential for users to add many blocks with different preset layouts and settings easily. By using patterns, users don’t need to individually add blocks to achieve rich representations in headers, columns, or Query blocks, as patterns act as a jumpstart blueprint that can be tweaked and adjusted to the user’s needs. 

An example of the improved interaction block patterns is demonstrated by the Query block, which allows users to select block patterns in its placeholder state. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the ways patterns can leverage the editing experience, and as such, efforts will continue improving pattern insertion capabilities.

Thanks to the recently released Block Pattern Directory, patterns can be copied and pasted into the block editor; upcoming Gutenberg iterations will connect and retrieve patterns from this directory, allowing users to choose from huge amounts of beautiful patterns without leaving the editor. Both to ease navigating the big number of patterns users will be able to choose from and accommodate increased pattern complexity and richness, such as in Query or HeaderHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. patterns, revisiting the pattern insertion UI will be an ongoing focus in the months to come.

 ⚒️ Pattern Insertion Tracking Issue

Design Tools

Several design tools are needed to ​​ensure a wide range of exquisitely crafted patterns can support powerful settings and rich block customizations. These encompass all tools related to the appearance of blocks and range from colors, typography, alignments, and positioning to filters like duotone, cropping, and background media and will need to integrate seamlessly with theme.json mechanics.

Going further, controls like font size, even if exposed as single values to users in the UI, are built behind the scenes to accommodate different viewport ranges. Apart from providing access to the underlying mechanisms through theme.json, responsive-previewing and device-specific editing will be necessary to support this.

To support the ever-increasing number of tools, the 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., while secondary in some regards to the block canvas and toolbar, will need to accommodate many of these tools, whereas the Component System will provide a shared design language between all these controls.

⚒️ Design Tools Overview Issue


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 an updated Site Editing overview issue that breaks down the upcoming work into more concrete next steps.

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 on GitHub! Check it out and join us.

Hearing your feedback is crucial to drive upcoming priorities and iterate on our work, so you are more than welcome to join our Full Site Editing Outreach Program!

If there’s anything we can do to make contributing easier, let us know in the comments or #core-editor chats. While we can’t promise to fix everything, we’d appreciate being aware of any blockers.


Props to @javiarce for creating the images, and to @cbringmann and @mcsf for reviewing the post.

#core-editor #gutenberg-next #gutenberg #full-site-editing

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:

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:

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

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:

Milestone 6 – Navigation Block

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

Calls for testing

Block Patterns

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

What’s next in Gutenberg? (May 2021)

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

The priorities for the month heavily focus on the WordPress 5.8 Must Haves, including auditing Experimental APIs and merging Gutenberg into WordPress trunk.

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. 

Widgets Editor

Work on the 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 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 is a continued focus for the month ahead. 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:

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 Widget 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 to allow for more adoption and offer a more modern experience. Because the Navigation Editor needs to work nicely with the Navigation Block (and vice versa), much of the current effort from contributors focus on the Navigation Block. With this in mind, current efforts include:

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

As with the prior months, work on this major focus for phase 2 is ongoing and is expected to continue as a big-picture goal for 2021. Work this month will include the following focus areas:

Milestone 1 – Site Editing Infrastructure and UI

Milestone 3 – Global Styles

Milestone 4 – Theme Blocks

Milestone 5 – Query Block

Milestone 6 – Navigation Block

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

FSE Roadmap

FSE Outreach Program

Theme Developers

  • The theme.json configuration file is becoming stable in the imminent Gutenberg 10.6:

Design

Other

Ways to Get Involved

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. 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 @cbringmann for reviewing this post.

#core-editor #gutenberg-next #gutenberg

What’s next in Gutenberg? (April 2021)

This monthly 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 April. 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. 

Widgets Editor

Work on the 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 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 is a continued focus for the month ahead. This effort aims to bring the flexibility of block editing to the widgets and 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. screens. The current efforts include:

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 Widget 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 to allow for more adoption and offer a more modern experience. Because the Navigation Editor needs to work nicely with the Navigation block (and vice versa), much of the current effort from contributors focus on the Navigation block. With this in mind, current efforts include:

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

As with the prior months, work on this major focus for phase 2 is ongoing and is expected to continue as a big-picture goal for 2021. Work this month will include the following focus areas:

Milestone 1 – Site Editing Infrastructure and UI

Milestone 3 – Global Styles

Milestone 4 – Theme Blocks

Milestone 5 – Query Block

Milestone 6 – Navigation Block

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

Full Site Editing Roadmap:

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:

Calls for testing:

Design:

A number of design explorations regarding improvements to reusable blocks are in the works, including:

Theme Developers:

Ways to Get Involved

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. 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.

#core-editor #gutenberg-next #gutenberg

What’s next in Gutenberg? (March 2021)

This monthly 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 March. 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. 

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 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

Work on the Block-based Widget Editor (Widgets Screen) is a continued focus for the month ahead. This effort aims to bring the flexibility of block-based editing to the widgets and 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. screens. The current efforts include:

Follow along:

You can find more information about the current work in progress in this exploratory issue for bringing blocks to the customizer and this summary issue for overall items for a block-based widget editor experience, 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 Widget Screen-focused meetings.

Navigation Screen

Like the Widgets Screen, the Navigation Screen aims to help expand what’s possible with menus while bringing block functionality to yet another part of WordPress to allow for more adoption and offer a more modern experience. Because the Navigation Screen needs to work nicely with the Navigation block (and vice versa), much of the current effort from contributors here is focused on the Navigation Block. With this in mind, current efforts include:

Follow along:

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

Full Site Editing

As with the prior months, work on this major focus for phase 2 is ongoing and is expected to continue as a big-picture goal for 2021. Work this month will include the following focus areas:

Milestone 1 – Site Editing Infrastructure and UI

Milestone 3 – Global Styles

  • Iterate on the block supports mechanism.
  • Add content-width option to GS & 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.

Milestone 4 – Theme Blocks

  • Continue identifying and bringing required template features to the site editor and site-editor blocks.

Milestone 5 – Query Block

  • The Query Block MVPMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia is ready! Next up, work will start to polish the experience with a focus on suggesting Patterns in block placeholder states.

Milestone 6 – Navigation Block

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

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

Contributors

  • As suggested during the recent Hallway Hangout hosted by @bernhard-reiter focused on writing end-to-end tests, contributors are encouraged to file issues requesting end-to-end tests when spotting a regressionregression 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. with the “[Package] E2E Tests” label.

Theme Developers

Design

Ways to Get Involved

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. 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-Based Themes meeting twice monthly on Wednesday @ 16:00 UTC in #themereview focused on preparing for Full Site Editing.

#core-editor, #gutenberg, #gutenberg-next

What’s next in Gutenberg? (February 2021)

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 February. 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. 

Preparations for WordPress 5.7

This release will include versions 9.3 to 9.9 of Gutenberg! The WordPress 5.7 Must Haves project board includes issues that need attention in preparation for the WordPress 5.7 release. Many contributors will be spending the month of February working on bugs and regressions to be fixed for inclusion in WordPress 5.7. As a reminder from this originally planning post, these are the main focuses: 

  • Update WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. to include current releases of 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.
  • Gutenberg: ship additional blocks, refine the UIUI User interface, add tools for themes and design, and continue working on the 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.
  • Continue work on auto-updates and jQuery.

Finally, a number of issues have been gathered in this issue for Dev Notes (more information on these notes here). Dev notesdev 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. are typically published along with the first Release Candidate which is currently scheduled for February 23rd, 2021

Global Styles

Global Styles refers to the system that defines and manages global aesthetics, allowing overall site styles, theme styles, and blocks to work well together. Currently, the focus remains on tightening up and fixing the flows, with the goal of preparing a V1 that can land as a core patchpatch A special text file that describes changes to code, by identifying the files and lines which are added, removed, and altered. It may also be referred to as a diff. A patch can be applied to a codebase for testing. early in the 5.7 cycle:

Of note, the parts of Global Styles that will land in 5.7 will solely concern the 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. structure and won’t impact users.

Follow along:

You can follow the progress for this overall system in this overview issue and by reviewing the Global Styles label

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 Widget Editor

Work on the Block-based widget editor (Widgets Screen) is a continued focus for the month ahead. The purpose of this effort is to bring the flexibility of block-based editing to the widgets and 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. screens. You can find more information about the current work in progress in this exploratory issue for bringing blocks to the customizer and this summary issue for overall items for a block based widget editor experience.  

Follow along:

You can follow the progress of this work on this project board and 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 widget screen focused meetings.

Full Site Editing

As with the prior months, work on this major focus for phase 2 is ongoing and is expected to continue as a big picture goal for 2021. Work this month will include the following focus areas:

Milestone 1 – Site Editing Infrastructure and UI

Milestone 5 – Query Block 

  • Query Block toolbar controls revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. to make it easier to show the content you want.
  • Exploring the idea of a Query Block builder UI to scale the experience for advanced users. 

Milestone 6 – Navigation Block

Work on the Navigation Block is an ongoing effort and focus for February. An overview of the work in progress can be found in the Navigation Block tracking issue.

We’re still watching the Theme Experiments repo to see how theme developers are building block-based themes. Please continue to share there and know we appreciate it.

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 (example from Query Block).

As a reminder, if you’re interested in being a part of testing Full Site Editing, check out the experimental outreach program to learn more

Areas to be aware of:

Block & Plugin Developers

Thanks to collaboration between @jessplease and @gziolo (and others!), a new package was created in this PR to make it even easier for developers wanting to develop their own third-party templates for the create-block package. You can read more about this addition on the @wordpress/create-block-tutorial-template reference page.

Theme Developers

A PR landed over the last month to load content in iframeiframe iFrame is an acronym for an inline frame. An iFrame is used inside a webpage to load another HTML document and render it. This HTML document may also contain JavaScript and/or CSS which is loaded at the time when iframe tag is parsed by the user’s browser. for the site editor experience. This should help get rid of any CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets. bleeding and allow a theme stylesheet to be dropped in the editor without any necessary adjustments. For theme authors this is something to be aware of as it should make block theme authoring easier!

Finally, there’s a comprehensive overview issue covering updates to experimental-theme.json that’s worth digging into to stay up to date.

Navigation Screen Work

Navigation screen work will be continuing this month but is a lower priority currently than the other areas listed above. A design iteration is underway as part of this effort. You can follow this work here and you can expect it to be a higher priority in the months to come. 

Ways to Get Involved:

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

#core-editor #gutenberg-next

#gutenberg

What’s next in Gutenberg? (January 2021)

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 January. 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. 

Global Styles

Global Styles refers to the system that defines and manages global aesthetics, allowing overall site styles, theme styles, and blocks to work well together. Global Styles focus areas for January include:

  • Determining what APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. and infrastructure functionality (not user facing) to include in WP 5.7
  • Support for translation theme.json strings

Follow along:

You can follow the progress for this overall system in this overview issue and by reviewing the Global Styles label

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 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

Work on the Block-based widget editor (Widgets Screen) is a continued focus for the month ahead. The purpose of this effort is to bring the flexibility of block-based editing to the widgets and 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. screens.

Blocks in the Widget Screen

Adding block support for the widget editor is an ongoing focus. Progress toward this effort can be accessed via the Block-based Widget Editor project board. The emphasis for January will be eliminating bugs.

Blocks in the Customizer

An exploratory phase to find the best path for adding blocks in the customizer. If this interests you, please review this previous discussion and check out the current plan for exploration. For greater context, you can also watch this hallway hangout focused on managing blocks in the customizer. 

Follow along:

You can follow the progress of this work on this project board and 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 widget screen focused meetings post 5.6 launch. 

Full Site Editing

As with the prior months, work on this major focus for phase 2 is ongoing and is expected to continue iterating over the coming months. Work this month will include the following focus areas:

Milestone 1 – Site Editing Infrastructure and UI

Work toward infrastructure and UIUI User interface improvements including:

Milestone 5 – Query Block 

This work includes the following Query Block design explorations:

  • A pagination block with different style variations to work alongside the Query Block. 
  • Query Block toolbar controls revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. to make it easier to show the content you want.
  • Exploring the idea of a Query Block builder UI to scale the experience for advanced users. 

Milestone 6 – Navigation Block

Work on the Navigation Block is an ongoing effort and focus for January. An overview of the work in progress can be found in the Navigation Block tracking issue.

In addition to the above, the Theme Experiments repo is being monitored to see how theme developers are building block-based themes. Please continue to share there, it is appreciated!

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 (example from Query Block).

As a reminder, if you’re interested in being a part of testing Full Site Editing, check out the experimental outreach program to learn more

Important Note:

If you were previously following this project board, it has now been closed in order to use the milestones issues more consistently and to prevent people from needing to follow the progress in two places. 

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

PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 8 has been released please review the Dev Notes in the 5.6 Field Guide with a particular focus on preparing your plugins for PHP 8

Theme Developers

Those interested in learning more about block-based themes may wish to read the comprehensive article @frankklein wrote on what he learned while building a block-based theme. 

Ways to Get Involved:

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. In particular, for this month, focusing efforts around testing the Widgets Screen would be very helpful and high impact. 

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 @ 14:00 UTC on Wednesday in #core-editor focused on all things Gutenberg. 
  • Block-Based Themes meeting twice monthly Wednesday @ 16:00 UTC on Wednesday in #themereview focusing on preparing for Full Site Editing enabled theme development. 
  • Block-Based Widget Editor meeting weekly @ 07:00 UTC in #feature-widgets-block-editor on Wednesday focusing on implementing the ability to manage blocks in widget areas.

#gutenberg-next

What’s next in Gutenberg? (December)

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 December. 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. 

Addressing WordPress 5.6 feedback

WordPress 5.6 RCrelease candidate One of the final stages in the version release cycle, this version signals the potential to be a final release to the public. Also see alpha (beta). 2 is set to ship on December 1st with the General Release following on December 8th. During the Release Candidaterelease candidate One of the final stages in the version release cycle, this version signals the potential to be a final release to the public. Also see alpha (beta). period development will be limited to addressing critical regressions and bugs. Ideally, this won’t be an area that needs great attention for this month’s work thanks to the great effort put in thus far to make this release a success. 

Follow along:

In addition to following individual features and their progress, you can follow where things stand on this WordPress 5.6 Must Haves project board.

Global Styles

Global Styles refers to the system that defines and manages global aesthetics, allowing overall site styles, theme styles, and blocks to work well together. Currently, the focus remains on tightening up and fixing the flows, with the goal of preparing a V1 that can land as a coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. patchpatch A special text file that describes changes to code, by identifying the files and lines which are added, removed, and altered. It may also be referred to as a diff. A patch can be applied to a codebase for testing. early in the 5.7 cycle. You can find an initial list of items for a V1 here that includes everything from exploring versioning for 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. to ensuring theme.json works cross-platform (web & mobile).

Follow along:

You can follow the progress for this overall system in this overview issue and by reviewing the Global Styles label

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

After pausing this work for November, the Widgets Screen is once more a focus for the month ahead. Currently, this work involves an exploratory phase to find the best path for adding blocks in 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.. If this interests you, please review this previous discussion and check out the current plan for exploration. For greater context, you can also watch this hallway hangout focused on managing blocks in the customizer. 

Follow along:

You can follow the progress of this work on this project board and 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 widget screen focused meetings post 5.6 launch. 

Full Site Editing

As with the prior months, work on this major focus for phase 2 is ongoing and is expected to continue iterating over the coming months. Work this month will focus on finishing up Milestone 1 – Site Editing Infrastructure and UI and Milestone 5 – Query Block alongside the overall Global Styles work previously mentioned. This work includes the following 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. design explorations:

  • A pagination block with different style variations to work alongside the Query Block. 
  • Query Block toolbar controls revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. to make it easier to show the content you want.
  • Exploring the idea of a Query Block builder UI to scale the experience for advanced users. 

Outside of the above, we’re still watching the Theme Experiments repo to see how theme developers are building block-based themes. Please continue to share there and know we appreciate it!

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 (example from Query Block).

As a reminder, if you’re interested in being a part of testing Full Site Editing, check out the experimental outreach program to learn more

Important Note:

If you were previously following this project board, it has now been closed in order to use the milestones issues more consistently and to prevent people from needing to follow the progress in two places. 

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

Please review the Dev Notes in the 5.6 Field Guide with a particular focus on preparing your plugins for PHP 8

Theme Developers

Read the comprehensive article @frankklein wrote on what he learned in building a block-based theme. 

Help test out the Twenty Twenty-One Block based theme and give feedback/report bugs.

Ways to Get Involved:

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. In particular, for this month, focusing efforts around testing the Widgets Screen would be very helpful and high impact. 

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

#core-editor #gutenberg-next