Gutenberg Phase 2 Friday Design Update #47

Howdy and happy Friday, everyone! How is 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/ coming along you ask? Version 7.8 was just released on Wednesday and focused mostly on the new UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. refinements. This release included:

  • Adds a current menu class to 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..
  • Adds a block outline when interacting with the block toolbar.
  • Polish around some icons.
  • Polish around the Date Picker.
  • and more…

Full site editing

Full site editing has seen some more design work recently. The extra effort reexamining the UXUX UX is an acronym for User Experience - the way the user uses the UI. Think ‘what they are doing’ and less about how they do it. and having multiple people review design work is paying off! I’m super impressed with the recent work being done in light of other site building software I’ve been testing.

Placeholder blocks
Currently, templates need some way to show where certain blocks would exist, without necessarily showing actual content in them. Thus, we’ve been exploring placeholder blocks for many of the Post blocks like: Post Title, Post Author, Post Date, Post Comments, etc. These are being refined in this PR. https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/19256#issuecomment-604765696

A few UX flows are ready for development. How exciting!

Block Patterns

Patterns took a bit of a pivot recently. Figuring out imagery to include in the software is difficult. Do we want pictures of mountains? Or maybe natural patterns? Cars? We’re not settled on this. So rather than holding up our patterns, we’re working to build a few really nicely designed text-based patterns for now. These patterns should be customizable by themes, and not include custom CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. that makes for a difficult integration into websites.

New icons

There was a recent PR submitted that include several new icons that conform to the new G2 UI and the new icons being implemented throughout the interface. https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/21209


Get involved

Now’s a great time to get involved. While the work on this project is intense, it’s always important to glean new perspectives from other WordPress users and community members. Just drop into any of the links provided above to read up on the details and contribute.

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

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