Gutenberg Phase 2 Friday Design Update #33

Happy Friday, Gutenbergers! (Nope, don’t say that again) WordPress 5.3 is coming fast and I’m feeling the pressure. Let’s keep an eye on these dates together to help keep each other focused.

  • September 16GutenbergGutenberg 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/ code freeze
  • September 23 – WP 5.3 BetaBeta A 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. 1
  • October 7 – Soft string freeze for WP 5.3

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. areas

Let’s start with something completely exciting! Block areas in Gutenberg. @matveb walks us through what the future of Gutenberg might possibly look like. This demo is breaking into the full-site editing experience we’ve been dreaming about with Gutenberg.

Widgets to blocks

  • The Legacy 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. block still needs to actually load the widget.
  • 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. settings need to reflect the Block Settings.

Navigation block

Looks like we have some direction on the design front. Most of the work here is being moved into PRs so that we can iterate in collaboration with development. Keep an eye on the label, [Block] Navigation Menu in GitHub.

Twenty Twenty default theme

Yep, you heard right! We now have a Twenty Twenty default theme in the works and a wonderful team of people behind it. It’s built with flexibility in mind and full support with the Block Editor.

Related 5.3 TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets

A recent post went up from @kjellr: Discussion: Higher contrast form fields and buttons. It includes some Trac tickets that, if decided upon, will affect Gutenberg as well. These changes include:

  • Darker field borders: porting Gutenberg design pattern to the rest of wp-admin.
  • New button styles: This would need to carry over to Gutenberg as well in a PR once the patch in Trac is approved.

Usability testing

Last month’s usability testing videos are posted! There were 5 videos this last month. While the script was a bit intensive, the users worked their way through allowing us to discover various difficulties with the existing software.

Make sure to take a look at the videos and leave any comments around what you noticed.


Thanks for reading, staying informed, and contributing anywhere you can!

#design, #gutenberg-weekly, #phase-2