The WordPress coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. development team builds WordPress! Follow this site for general updates, status reports, and the occasional code debate. There’s lots of ways to contribute:
Found a bugbugA 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.?Create a ticket in the bug tracker.
This is a summary of a Hallway Hangout that was first announced on Make Core. The aim was to have a shared space where we could chat about what’s being worked on to provide broader awareness to more WordPress contributors and get feedback. The hope is that by coming together early before the next betaBetaA pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. period to talk about different features, we can, as a community, flush out concerns sooner, help more folks get involved, and find ways to work better together. Thank you to the 18 folks who joined and to @saxonafletcher and @richtabor for demoing.
Video Recording:
Demos:
The first hour or so covered demos of features with a few questions mixed throughout. What follows is a high level description of the demo topic with links to GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ issues to dive into more and questions asked and answered related to the topic. To make it easier to follow, I also tried my best to split each demo into each section so folks can pick and choose to engage as they’d like. This doesn’t include the full footage but it includes the relevant bits for demoing.
Theme Style Presets
Rich quickly went through at a high level theme style variations, using Twenty Twenty-Four theme as a use case. He then went through abstracting color and typography styles (more than just fonts and includes things like letter spacing) as their own presets. This work was initially merged in a recent PR and works with all existing themes today that support style variations. Going forward, there are some technical details to iron out along with potentially evolving the experience to better support themes with a large set of variations. For a greater view of this general area, dive into the Colors and typeset presets from theme style variations overview issue.
Section Styles
Rich recapped the blockBlockBlock 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. style variations mechanism and how you can register variations via theme.jsonJSONJSON, 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. for multiple blocks at a time, including a demo of how this functionality would work in the editor to allow for “section styles”. This isn’t inventing anything new but modifying existing functionality of block styles. The biggest new functionality is that you can assign a variation to multiple blocks and to child blocks at one time. For Rich’s demo, switching between variations changed the styling for Group, Column, and Columns blocks. Overall, this work for 6.6 is being tracked here with the biggest PR still underway to extend block style variations as a mechanism to support this.
Q: For light/dark in the block styles demo, how are these configured differently than a block style or block variation?
Reusing block style variation and applying it to all child/nested blocks too. With all of those combinations, can still granularly change things. It’s make theme.json more portable across themes.
Q: Are there any naming conventions needed for consistency of colors?
Any theme can decide what these variations look like so it doesn’t matter what the color slugs are that a theme uses. In previous themes, base and contrast were primary color slugs used but any other color combinations you can’t guarantee. This allows the theme to define what combinations of colors work well and the theme styles that variation rather than guessing and match up different slugs.
We briefly touched on the many related issues there are around color naming as a broader topic: #29568 & #53996 & 39372.
Q: Is the theme.json you are showing available to look at somewhere?
Yes. Here’s the relevant, new bits from Rich’s demo:
Q: Are these essentially class-based? i.e. will these style variations still work with CSSCSSCascading Style Sheets. files (and JSON at the same time)?
Yes, class based like other block style variations.
Zoomed out view
Rich demoed the work being done around zoomed out editing which emphasizes patterns rather than editing blocks, allowing you to quickly build with patterns (reorder, delete, apply section styles, shuffle). There are some UXUXUser experience considerations to figure out, including ensuring the mode is invoked at the right time and drag & drop works well. The work done here could also apply in the future to the experience of adding a new page or even onboarding into WordPress. It’s unclear right now whether it’s something that will be a toggle to use as you want or a view that’s offered in targeted moments (ie global styles or inserting patterns).
Q: By zooming out for the pattern view – does that mean that patterns aren’t still useful for smaller groups of blocks (i.e. wanting to add a CTA pattern to a column)?
These patterns are still useful! This new option is simply offering a different context and allowing you to engage with patterns in a different way. This is also something to figure out how to do to provide a level to add patterns to a specific section.
Q: I’m missing the purpose of the shuffle button. What if it was a button the showed all relevant patterns to replace the current one with?
It’s an exploration to see if it’s viable and it might not be where we end up. Of note, shuffling just goes to the next pattern rather than a random pattern. We talked at this point about different ways of interacting with patterns, including replacing patterns in the Inspector or selecting patterns from a modal (query loopLoopThe 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. block) or shuffling.
Advancing data views
Saxon demoed the latest work around Data Views including a new list view layout type for posts, new default views for templates, and the efforts done to merge patterns & template parts. He discussed being able to set custom views and how useful that will be especially in an enterprise context when lots of folks are working across content. He also shared a figma prototype showing what it might look like with products, rather than posts/pages, to show a custom post typeCustom Post TypeWordPress can hold and display many different types of content. A single item of such a content is generally called a post, although post is also a specific post type. Custom Post Types gives your site the ability to have templated posts, to simplify the concept. experience.
As part of this broader work, the Details and Inspector are being unified to simplify both where to find information and the steps to get to editing (without the Details panel, you can go straight into the editing experience). We discussed extensibility, namely around the APIs currently being private but how the work is being tackled with extensibility at its coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. For folks who want to explore today, they can bundle the data view styles in their plugin. In looking ahead, we also talked about responsiveness improvements and how consumers of these components can decide how to define the experience, including any default views or custom views.
Q: That preview of the “product custom fields” as a screen you see before the editor – how does that design relate to the modal for legacy metaboxes that is also happening?
Ideally any data values associated with a post type should be actionable within data views, including generating fields for data. Currently, the data views work is looking at ways to quick edit and bulk edit when selecting multiple items. In some cases, this might be done by editing in the Inspector. There needs to be a broader discussion to define what’s shown in each view vs in the inspector instead of at the bottom. In some cases, there are benefits for things that require more space, like products, to having a more detail style view as a middle step, to allow for editing rather than having something on the bottom or side where you’re trying to edit something in a smaller space.
Q: Are we able to control where our custom post type appears in the sidebarSidebarA 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. order?
Saxon went through what synced patterns are along with how overrides function, allowing you to edit a part of a synced pattern while keeping the rest in sync, and showcased a synced pattern with overrides and contentOnly editing enabled. This work is being tracked for 6.6 after being punted from 6.5. As part of this overall feature, we also discussed advancing contentOnly editing to create a simpler editing experience by surfacing more top level sections rather than needing to work about the block hierarchy and providing easy access to edit specific aspects in the inspector.
Q: Would like to hear thoughts on pattern overrides/content locking working with blocks that use repeatable inner blocks (lists, buttons, etc)?
This touches on a common limitation of these kinds of tools and is captured in a related GitHub issue. We talked about how, in the future, you can add overrides for all inner blocks as a way to work around this but, for now, this limitation remains. For example, you could make a grid block overrideable with all children within it inheriting the same.
Block connections
Saxon demoed block connections with an example post type called “Events” with a custom template with a handful of blocks connected to custom fields (location, venue). Right now, this connection has to be made in code including for what’s planned for 6.6 but there’s a larger vision that includes how this could be edited in the interface in the future. For 6.6 though, the ability to edit the custom fieldCustom FieldCustom Field, also referred to as post meta, is a feature in WordPress. It allows users to add additional information when writing a post, eg contributors’ names, auth. WordPress stores this information as metadata. Users can display this meta data by using template tags in their WordPress themes. visually is planned. Saxon demoed this by editing the custom field directly in an individual event post and showing how it was updated in the posts lists automatically. Saxon also showed how the data will all remain in sync if you have the custom field displayed in multiple places. As a final demo, Saxon showed a Query Loop block querying through the events post type and how he can simply copy/paste the blocks with custom fields into the Query Loop to reuse the functionality there.
Q: Do these fields have to be registered somewhere or are they automatically detected/available by adding it via the code editor?
Yes, they need to be registered and be “non-protected”. Here’s part 1 and part 2 of a developer blogblog(versus network, site) post on connecting custom fields for more information.
Q: What field types (text, select, relationship) is this expected to support when introduced? For custom fields and block binding.
For 6.5, the following are supported:
Paragraph: content.
Heading: content.
Image: URLURLA specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org, alt, and title.
Button: text, URL, linkTarget, rel.
Grid layout
Saxon showed the work in progress layout improvements for the Grid layout option. There are two modes in Grid: auto (set minimum column width and can’t manually set items) and manual (set number of columns, set number of rows, and manually set items). Once a grid is placed in manual mode, you can reposition them and create new items. Saxon discussed the explorations around being able to “pin to grid” as a way to say that a grid item should never move and how with manual mode this idea of pinning would go away leaving everything to be seen as pinned to the grid manually. This makes manual mode more complex and, for something more structured, that’s where auto mode would be used. A big part of the entire feature is figuring out the best default experience for folks. If you want to follow this work, there’s now a slackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel for discussions: #feature-grid.
Q: Any thoughts on how some of these more unique grid layouts will work on mobile?
There are lots of various discussions around how best to do this and we need to be smart initially around how to stack items, like stack on mobile for columns.
Q: Can we overlap items?
Not yet. There’s a limit in place to prevent that. You can create overlapping items but for v1 we will limit how you can do that. The end goal is you can in the future.
Additional questions
Q: Summarizing a question asked live – where do I get new information about what’s coming up, especially outside of the technical resources? What do I have to follow?
We talked about how all levels of communication are needed from longer tutorials to quick reels to user friendly resources to deeply technical walkthroughs. This is a “forever problem” that cuts across how information is found on the WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/ website to release resources to the entire experience of using WordPress. We talked about how the media corps work might help with this too.
Q: How do we feel about the fact that the Fonts APIAPIAn 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. exist while also encouraging theme builders to ship fonts so that variations (typography) are available in global styles? Themes are sometimes shipping 50 fonts. How much do we ship? Should a theme ship with no font? A lot of these themes are huge! This is a more philosophical question.
We talked about how we could potentially reconcile these so declaring a font family in theme.json could potentially bring it into the site editor but that, in general, fonts should still provide presets for users. Ideally, it can all be connected to the font library to keep fonts in one place but we shouldn’t make users go hunting for fonts and themes should be opinionated in how they want folks to use it.
Q: I’d love to hear if anyone has a fix for this issue I’m dealing with regarding caching and style variations. tldr the style variations cache doesn’t clear, so you have to switch back and forth between variations to clear it while working on a new theme.
Please chime in on the issue if you think you can help! None of us on the call had a good answer for it as it mainly requires a workaround rather than a fix that can be shipped as it’s a known limitation.
This is a summary of a Hallway Hangout that was first announced on Make Core. The aim was to have a shared space where we could talk synchronously about overlapping problems facing the site editing experience.
Video Recording:
Notes:
Notes are somewhat provided by some AI tooling but, unfortunately, wasn’t quite on point enough for me to use entirely. If anything is off or missing, please let me know.
The hallway hangout focused on discussing issues and problems users experience with the Site Editor, including changing something across an entire site or just for one blockBlockBlock 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., pervasive inconsistencies in user interfaces, understanding inherited values and options, and determining what can and cannot be edited. This came out of a public blog post on the topic.
We discussed the need to improve documentation and educate users to help address these overlapping problems. We chatted about the what’s underneath the desire to not ship any new features and that some of these areas of problems require new features to be fixed. We discussed how some GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/ features are released in stages across various releases ultimately paving the way for greater work to be done, like Block HooksHooksIn WordPress theme and development, hooks are functions that can be applied to an action or a Filter in WordPress. Actions are functions performed when a certain event occurs in WordPress. Filters allow you to modify certain functions. Arguments used to hook both filters and actions look the same. released in 6.4 and expanded upon for 6.5. Another example that was mentioned was content-only locking, which was added into a release without a UIUIUser interface as it was a foundational part of a larger roadmap (overriding content in patterns needed this work for example). Part of what needs to be done here to is to better communicating how new features connect to and build upon each other. In many cases, polishing these experiences and reducing confusion has been a major focus of many of the last releases.
We discussed how it feels like we’re caught in between right now and there are different UI experiences floating around between the customizerCustomizerTool 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., site editor, and then page builders building on top. In a perfect world, the page builders use what’s being built in coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and the experience of using blocks feels more natural, whether just in the block editor or in the site editor (instead of those feeling like different experiences). It’s also tricky to come up with solutions that don’t just surface the complexity without providing clarity too. It’s both the most rewarding and most difficult to cover the wide range of use cases WordPress seeks to cover.
We chatted about using the experimental flag in Gutenberg pluginPluginA 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 to allow incremental exploration before features are merged to core for some features. Tensions exist between accumulating features quickly in Gutenberg vs bottleneck of merging to core releases. Folks want to see more efforts made to document feature decisions and UI changes at the same level as core tickets, with complete descriptions. Getting feedback into UI decisions as much as possible will help with this too as we should make changes based on feedback and design direction combined. It would be great if more hosts ran the Gutenberg plugin directly and gave feedback to help with this. At this point, the #outreach channel was plugged as was the new outreach group in GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ to pingPingThe act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” folks who have opted in to provide feedback.
We discussed differentiating user capabilities for blocks and experiences based on user roles and the context of what they are trying to do on a site. More work needs to be done to explore and improve user capabilities. It was suggested that having more Core team members build real sites could help surface important issues and help prioritize work. Right now, we do see this happening with the Create Block Theme allowing folks to build block themes directly with the Site Editor and surface gaps. The same is true of each time a default theme is made and the gaps that are surfaced and fixed as a result. As much as possible, building real sites or working with folks who do has always been and remains critical.
Feedback from folks in the agency space centered around how agencies can’t ensure brand standards due to inability to lock down with GitGitGit is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. Git is easy to learn and has a tiny footprint with lightning fast performance. Most modern plugin and theme development is being done with this version control system. https://git-scm.com/. when content can change in the editor. It’s important to find ways to reassure clients that brand standards can still be ensured with new workflows. The same problem exists on the broader WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/ site so there are big opportunities for learnings and feedback. In some cases, folks tried the Site Editor last year and need to be invited back in with the latest & greatest to try once more with additional plugins to fill the gaps for now. In other cases, folks are successfully using it. Opened this developer blog idea after the fact to have agencies start sharing how they’ve successfully used the Site Editor process wise.
A new “overlapping problem” that @annezazu will add to the post is around the swirling experience of gradual adoption, extension, and curating of the editing experience. How do we make it as seamless as possible and have it make sense to folks? Expect the post to be updated with more thoughts there.
Towards the end, we also discussed issues everyday users face with site editing, the need for better onboarding, and a call to join more WordPress meetupMeetupAll local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. events. The “usual suspects” came up particularly around editing the homepage, the pain of the template hierarchy being exposed, missing settings in the Site Editor, etc. We also discussed an unfortunate experience someone had in giving feedback but feeling very dismissed. This is not something any of us want anyone to feel and it’s important we engage constructively. We also discussed how the majority still use classic themes and the importance of respecting both in discussions.
To close, we talked about how these are the toughest problems to solve! They are not easy by design and there’s a lot of appreciation for everyone who is willing to engage in these topics. We’re very much listening and I wouldn’t have been able to write the post to begin with if we weren’t. The biggest next step is to hold an additional hallway hangout in the future around one of these areas with a large design presence to help present solutions, discuss potential drawbacks, and see how we can move forward.
To bring a broader discussion into a higher bandwidth medium, in this session, we’ll talk through some overlapping problems in the Site Editor that are both known and complex to solve.
How to join
If you’re interested in joining, the Hallway Hangout will happen on 2024-02-27 17:00 . A Zoom link will be shared in the core-editorSlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel before starting and all are welcome to join, whether to listen or participate, for as long or as little as you’d like. This will be recorded and recapped.
Agenda
At a high level, expect this to be an open forum to discuss in more depth some of the high level problems facing the current experience in the Site Editor, including discussions about current in-progress work and an examination of what makes these problems complex to solve. This includes the following aspects of the current experience:
Changing something across your entire site or just for one blockBlockBlock 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..
Seeing where items are used across the experience.
Understanding inherited values and options.
Understanding what you can and can’t edit.
As a reminder, hallway hangouts are meant to be casual and collaborative so come prepared with a kind, curious mind. Depending on how large the session is, we may not get to all questions live on the call but we can always include follow up in the recap.
These “CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Editor Improvement…” posts (labeled with the #core-editor-improvementtagtagA directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.)) are a series dedicated to highlighting various new features, improvements, and more from Core Editor related projects.
Numerous small gains are slated for WordPress 6.5 that you might have missed in the excitement around more prominent features, like the Font Library. While they garner less attention, the following improvements contribute to more flexibility and efficiency, making a big difference in your everyday WordPress experience. Take a moment to learn more about them—and explore how the power of details in 6.5 can transform your current workflows.
New List View shortcuts
6.5 will introduce new List View shortcuts for improved efficiency, saving you time when performing common actions with this tool:
Simplified access to a block’s setting menu: This update lets you open a blockBlockBlock 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.’s settings menu by right-clicking on a List View item, enabling swift changes as needed.
Quick block selection shortcut: Use CMD+A on Mac or CTRL+A on Windows to select all blocks within List View, facilitating faster batch actions.
Copy, paste, and cut blocks using the keyboard shortcuts you’re used to when selecting blocks in List View (CMD+C and CMD+X to copy and cut blocks, and CMD+V to paste blocks).
View your template when editing pages or posts
A lot of code-wise work has been done to unify the Site Editor and Post Editor experiences for block themes. Thanks to these efforts, you can now view your template when editing a page in the Post/Page Editor and enjoy the same experience regardless of where you’re working. This ability allows for convenient on/off toggling of the template preview, offering you even more flexibility. Similar to the Site Editor experience, selecting any part of the template triggers a snackbar notification and a quick pathway to edit the template directly.
Duplicate patterns to quickly change the sync status or make theme pattern your own
Patterns provided by a theme are currently locked. As a result, reusing them as a basis for creating your own patterns previously required several steps. WordPress 6.5 adds a new quick option to streamline this process and let you duplicate a theme pattern without the hassle. This also eases the experience of changing the sync setting.
Review a summary of styling changes and quickly view your site while saving
With so many styling options available, it’s important to know what’s changing when you hit save. Now you can, thanks to a short summary that matches the summary you’d see you’re browsing revisions, giving you the information you need when changing up the look and feel of your site. After saving, you can then select “View Site” in the updated snackbar notice to check out the front end of your site and marvel at how good it looks (or line up some additional changes).
Rename blocks for better organization
Building on the ability to rename Group blocks in List View introduced in WordPress 6.4, the next release will allow renaming nearly every block for better organization and personalization. This update makes it easy for users to see at a glance and understand how the content has been structured. On the other hand, it helps theme authors provide a more intuitive experience for those using and interacting with their themes and patterns.
It’s worth noting that the following blocks cannot be renamed intentionally:
core/block
core/template-part
core/pattern
core/navigation
Enjoy drag-and-drop improvements
Drag and drop is an essential aspect of building with blocks, providing an easy, simple way to add, combine, and rearrange content as desired. This release will introduce a diverse range of enhancements aimed at making both drag-and-drop functionality and actions more intuitive:
Allow dragging and dropping to the beginning or end of your content
Add a drag cursor when hovering over items that can be dragged in List View
Improve dragging and dropping between adjacent container blocks, such as Group and Cover blocks
Enable dragging blocks into template parts for easier placement of elements, like a site logo next to a site title
Show a visual indication when a block isn’t allowed to be dropped, helping guide and communicate where one can and can’t drag and drop
Allow dragging and dropping to create rows and galleries; for example, placing an image next to another will automatically create a gallery
In List View, collapsed blocks expand when a block is dropped into them, ensuring visibility of the dropped block
In List View, items are displaced to help provide a more visual and tangible experience of dragging and dropping blocks
In List View, a drag cursor is shown for any draggable block
Taken together, anyone using the next version of WordPress will find dragging and dropping blocks more versatile and powerful to use.
Customize your experience with a new Preferences panel
WordPress 6.5 will bring a reorganized preference modal to personalize the editor interface to your liking, including new dedicated panels for Appearance and AccessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) settings. You will also notice improved clarity and consistency in text descriptions and a few more new settings.
Create consistent designs with Cover block aspect ratios
In addition to minHeight support, the Cover block now offers aspect ratio support. This means you can easily set predefined aspect ratios to customize your visuals further and help maintain design consistency with less effort. For added convenience, you can control this feature globally for all Cover blocks or adjust it individually for each block.
Use the block toolbar in Distraction Free mode for quick changes
WordPress 6.5 makes it easier to make quick customizations while staying focused in Distraction Free mode. Simply moving your mouse to the top of the editor will smoothly reveal the block toolbar. Previously, accessing the block toolbar wasn’t an option in Distraction Free mode, requiring users to toggle it on and off for even minor adjustments.
Thank you to @rmartinezduque for collaborating on this post and all of the designers who helped make some of these visual assets!
These “CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Editor Improvement…” posts (labeled with the #core-editor-improvementtagtagA directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.)) are a series dedicated to highlighting various new features, improvements, and more from Core Editor related projects.
RevisionsRevisionsThe 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. are an integral part of the creation experience, providing a safety net and a way to see where you’ve been to know where to go next. It’s so important that there’s a dedicated area of focus for phase 3 efforts dedicated to the broader area of work! While lots of work lies ahead, WordPress 6.5 is slated to include some impactful changes and new features to current revision functionality in the Site Editor.
If you want to try out what’s shared below for yourself, head over to the post on Early Opportunities to Test WordPress 6.5 where you can quickly spin up your own test site to experience it for yourself and give feedback. Everything shared below is available as of GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/ 17.4 and planned for inclusion in WordPress 6.5.
Let’s look at a before and after
To help bring these changes to life, below is a video showcasing what’s written below. The “before” site is using WordPress 6.4.2 and the “after” site is using WordPress 6.4.2 with Gutenberg 17.5.1 installed. These test sites were pulled from Early Opportunities to Test WordPress 6.5 so anyone is welcome to explore:
Read a short summary of styling changes thanks to a new design
Alongside a new design showing more granular information, like a more granular timestamp, a short summary of changes made in each revision is now available. Combined, this greatly simplifies understanding what’s in each revision rather than relying on spotting visual changes.
View all style revisions thanks to pagination
Rather than showing just the last 100 revisions, all revisions are now available thanks to pagination. This both works around a technical limitation of 100 results per REST response and helps make navigating between revisions much easier than scrolling endlessly in the sidebarSidebarA 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..
Toggle on the Style Book to get a different angle
In the same way you might be used to using the Style Book when making changes to your site in the Site Editor, you can now do the same when looking at different revisions to see changes that might not otherwise be visible on the current template. Just as when you use the Style Book normally, you can toggle it on and off as you’d like.
Rely on full revisions for everything
While the undo and redo buttons have a role to play, having access to full revision history allows for a much greater understanding of changes, their impact, and actions one can take. While this was mentioned in a previous post, revisions for templates and template parts are finally slated for inclusion in Core for WordPress 6.5. This means out of the box folks can browse changes to templates, template parts, and styles providing a nice safety net.
To provide context, when navigation and edit mode were initially introduced in GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/ 6.3, nested blocks and the Site Editor did not exist. We now face the challenge of finding a more efficient way to navigate between content.
If you’re interested in joining, the Hallway Hangout will happen on 2023-11-15 16:00. A Zoom link will be shared in the #accessibilitySlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel before starting and all are welcome to join, whether to listen or participate, for as long or as little as you’d like.
Agenda
At a high level, we’ll start with some intros to get familiar with who has joined us on the call before diving into the topic in practical terms: How does everything work today? How might deprecation work? What accessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) improvements or fixes are needed for this to be viable?
As a reminder, hallway hangouts are meant to be casual and collaborative so come prepared with a kind, curious mind. Because this will be more of a working session, we’ll be solely focused on the topic prepared so please keep that in mind when considering whether to join.
To ensure the Site Editor can be used by everyone, this hallway hangout aims to dive deep into the current accessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) of this new experience with the aim to iterate and improve.
How to join
If you’re interested in joining, the Hallway Hangout will happen on 2023-09-14 15:00. A Zoom link will be shared in the #accessibilitySlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel before starting and all are welcome to join, whether to listen or participate, for as long or as little as you’d like.
Agenda
At a high level, we’ll go through the following:
Quick intros.
Discussions around current concerns.
Demos of pain points from @alexstine and @joedolson.
Discussion about ways to resolve/address current, known issues.
As a reminder, hallway hangouts are meant to be casual and collaborative so come prepared with a kind, curious mind along with any questions or items you want to discuss around this important area of the project. Outside of the time for demos, we’ll intentionally have space for open discussion.
These “CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Editor Improvement…” posts (labeled with the #core-editor-improvementtagtagA directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.)) are a series dedicated to highlighting various new features, improvements, and more from Core Editor related projects.
In the last few GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/ releases, a collection of work provides massive improvements to the Site Editor to scale the experience, provide clarity, and add new functionality with more planned. These features make it easier to get a complete view of your site and add more ways to make changes to it, from a new Navigation blockBlockBlock 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. experience to Custom CSSCSSCascading Style Sheets.. The improved experience also addresses key pieces of feedback that have come up in places like the FSE Outreach Program: frustration with the navigation block, confusion around what pieces are globally editable, desire to add custom CSS, a sense of overwhelm with the number of block settings, and more. While iteration will always be required, this marks a substantial shift in refinement, functionality, and ease, paving the way for wrapping up phase 2.
Providing clarity and ease
Previously, when making changes to your site, it was hard to know how those changes might impact other pieces. For example, if you opened up Styles and made changes to a block that wasn’t visible on the template you were on, it wasn’t clear how the changes might land. The same thing happened with Template Part blocks where changes made to one instance impacted all others. There was no indication in the interface that these blocks functioned differently.
Now, with both the Style Book and built in previews of the Styles system, it’s far easier to know the impact of what you’re doing with Styles. The Style Book accomplishes this by providing a way to toggle a view of Styles that shows all blocks, separated into sections:
Meanwhile, the previews baked into Styles offer another way to see at a glance the changes you’re making without needing to fully enter the Style book. Each offers a specific way to engage with styling your site as you see fit.
Site navigation is an incredibly important part of building most sites and the Navigation block has often struggled to offer an experience that covered the majority use case of building a simple menu. While improved fallbacks in 6.1 provided a big step forward, the base usability still needed to be refined. Over the last few releases, as an experiment in Gutenberg > Experiments, an editable list view in block settings has been added to the Navigation block. This editable list view feels reminiscent of the prior menu editing experience but rooted in the world of blocks. You can follow this work in the project’s dedicated GitHub board or the current Navigation block tracking issue.
Scaling the experience
With more templates being added, more functionality, and more types of content in the Inserter, there are numerous situations where the interface needed to scale to accommodate the growing nature of the site editor. This ensures that, as more is added to the experience, the complexity is managed in a way that still makes building a site delightful and intuitive.
Rather than being in a more narrow yet important part of your site when opening the Site Editor, you can now explore it in its entirety and edit from there with Browse mode. This new mode reorganizes the site editor by providing a way to move between templates and template parts. You can add new templates or template parts directly from this interface or choose to edit whenever you’d like. This stands in contrast to the prior experience of opening the Site Editor and being dropped into the template powering the homepage, without necessarily knowing how to get to other templates or template parts.
The Inserter experience was leveled up for patterns, a key part of content and site creation which save time by relying on pre-built designs. The previous design required you to choose from a dropdown before viewing each categoryCategoryThe 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. of patterns. The new design provides an easy way to see and click between each category before showing larger previews of each pattern, with the option to hover over a pattern to see its name. More work is underway to continue refinements by updating the category names and distinctions. When looking ahead to integration with the Pattern Directory and potential exposure to far more patterns, this iteration provides a strong foundation.
With an immense number of new design tools introduced in 6.1, the block settings interface needed to adapt. To simplify and organize the experience, the block settings were split into different tabs, adapting based on the needs of each block. While this results in more steps to get to different settings, it provides a mental framework for customizing blocks that better reflects what each option does. This is particularly relevant for more complex blocks, like the Navigation or Group blocks. Room remains to improve this experience, particularly around how to best handle unset/inherited values, and it currently is listed as an experiment to enable in Gutenberg > Experiments.
While the site editor, launched in WordPress 5.9, initially started in a more contained state, each WordPress release brings new functionality to accomplish more. In some cases, this means old things done in new ways to customize your content, like with Custom CSS, and in other cases it has more to do with easing embracing the Site Editor, like with the ability to migrate widgets to block themes.
Block themers and designers alike have long requested Custom CSS, even as design tools grow enabling you to use built in functionalitytools. For many, there are always going to be items that aren’t covered by Styles, As of Gutenberg 14.8, there’s now the option to add Custom CSS directly in the Style’s interface so you can customize directly while using the Site Editor and ensure those customization stick across themes. This is currently listed as an experiment in Gutenberg > Experiments with work underway to stabilize the feature. Alongside this effort, work is underway to add per block Custom CSS too so they can work in unison.
Previously when creativity struck in the Site Editor as you were styling an individual block, you’d have to copy what you came up with to the Styles system for that individual block at a global level. As of Gutenberg 14.9, that changes with the introduction of a “Push changes to Global Styles” button which automatically moves those changes to an individual block to Styles. This new functionality makes it easier to design on the go, knowing you can ensure consistency with a press of a button. Iterations are already underway to make this option even more user friendly.
Lastly, the Inserter now allows for media to be added directly so you can add blocks, patterns, and your recent media library items all from one place. Next up, Openverse integration is underway, meaning you’d soon have access to everything within Openverse to use as you create your site.
What’s next?
More work remains to be done around each of these areas and you can follow along in this tracking issue on GitHub where updates are provided weekly for a main set of tasks. If you want to help shape what’s being worked on, know GitHub issues/PRs are always welcome and the FSE Outreach Program continues to facilitate explorations and calls for testing to explore each of these features. All are welcome to join, regardless of experience level with the Site Editor or WordPress in general.
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