Hallway Hangout: Discussion on Full Site Editing Issues/PRs/Designs (10 September)

This is a summary of a Hallway Hangout that was wrangled in the #fse-outreach-experiment channel as part of the FSE Outreach Program. Thank you to everyone who joined in!

Attendance: @poena @richtabor @karmatosed @paulbigai

Video Recording:

Topics Covered:

• We started the call talking the current theme switching exploration and the intent that this be a creative, “wishful thinking” kind of exercise! Responses are due by September 29th.
• We briefly covered 5.9 plans mainly commenting on how quickly time is passing/how close those dates are.
• We discussed dimension controls both in terms of the excitement around seeing more options added and a desire to see them more intuitively organized. This spread across a few issues including a great comment on the ToolsPanel controls, a proposed simplified layout/dimensions controls across blocks from Rich, and the flex layout being added to the social link block. This raised the question of whether there are stats on most used settings for each 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. to help inform these decisions.
• We chatted about the desire to have the option to disable a feature from theme.json when the same feature is initially added. Could this be a minimum requirement from the start? Anne is going to pass along this feedback to those working on 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..
• We jumped into the lighter navigation block overview issue which tied nicely into the feedback that came from the last call for testing. We talked about the difficulty in adding even simple links, explored issues around splitting the controls for URL and text, and what integrated patterns might look like (as well as problems!).
• We went through the Global Styles interface overview issue and discussed possible entry points, including perhaps a future dedicated space. Some folks remarked that the new icon looks like duotone and the light/dark mode option. This led to going through the color picker component briefly and dreams of being able to create an entire theme.json file just in the interface instead of manually writing one.
• We briefly went through and plugged Rich’s post related to these topics: Standardizing Theme.json Color Slugs in WordPress Block Themes, Standardizing Theme.json Font Sizes in WordPress Block Themes, Standardizing Theme.json Site Spacing in WordPress Block Themes.
• Finally, we briefly went through @shaunandrews great post on revamping the document status and visibility options, partially inspired by the Global Styles work!

#fse-hallway-hangout, #fse-outreach-program, #full-site-editing