Gutenberg Phase 2 Friday Design Update #2

January is halfway done and 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/ issues are gaining traction and feedback from a variety of people. Thanks to everyone for sharing your thoughts, and opinions!

Widgets to blocks

There’s been several concerns about widgets from people in the 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/. feeds, so thought to address it here briefly. While Gutenberg is converting all coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. widgets to blocks, they won’t be going away completely quite yet. 😉 There is a “Classic Widget” block being built to support the widgets that haven’t yet converted to blocks. If you’re looking to get involved, please check out the GitHub project board.

In relation to this, the widgets screen in wp-admin will be changing over to blocks. There’s concern around this for good reason. But ultimately as everything becomes a block, this paradigm shift needs to be communicated in smaller steps to help all users make the transition.

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.

The navigation block and the interface for creating navigation menus is being discussed with some innovative concepts. What if the “Pages” screen was where you built your nav keeping the nav block simple? Or should the nav block be where you create the entire menu? Share ideas in the ticket!

Tightening up

If neither the widgets blocks, nor nav blocks are your thing, there’s a whole list of Gutenberg related issues that need tightening up. As mentioned in the State of the WordState of the Word This is the annual report given by Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress at WordCamp US. It looks at what we’ve done, what we’re doing, and the future of WordPress. https://wordpress.tv/tag/state-of-the-word/., “tightening up” is a focus for Phase 2. There’s a lot that needs work! Come help.

Research work

Yep, research is still ongoing. Some themes are beginning to emerge as they work through the data. Help out in the #research channel in slack.

There’s also conversation around how to present the data, and where to store it; a site, a PDF, Google Slides?

Share your work

Many like to post their thoughts and explorations on their own blogs. Unfortunately this isn’t always highly visible. Well there’s a whole project board dedicated to research with a column specific to “explorations.” Give a shout out in either the #design or #research channels in slack to get your work added there. Every little bit helps inform decisions going forward.

#gutenberg-weekly, #phase-2