FSE Program Rallying Recipe Reviewers Summary

This post is a summary of the fourteenth call for testing for the experimental FSE outreach program. As always, I want to highlight those who helped to bring others along with them in this latest effort: 

• @courane01 and @arasae for running a fun and informative social learning space on this call for testing.
• @piermario for creating an Italian translation with a much better recipe to bring more folks into this call for testing.

Shout out to @alixnotes for being the sole first-time contributor for this call for testing. Get excited – you will soon have a testing contributor badge on your WordPress profile!

High-level summary

Across many of the responses to this call for testing, it was quickly clear that folks found the Template Editor via the Post Editor uniquely confusing, especially after growing used to the Site Editor. Because of how the Template Editor interacts or doesn’t with the Post Editor, a few folks struggled to understand when they were editing the template vs the post itself. In terms of the next editions of the List and Quote 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., there was general excitement around the new capabilities, especially once some refinements and bugs are addressed around keyboard controls for the List block.

To help ground the following feedback, here are some quotes about the overall experience to keep in mind: 

The new Quote block worked well. It is now possible to add nested blocks inside it, one of the features I have long needed as a writer here at the Tavern when quoting from third-party resources…Overall, I am eager to see the finalized versions of these blocks. They will bring back some of the missing functionality from the classic editor and give users the flexibility to do even more.

@greenshady in this WP Tavern post. 

I only got halfway through the FSE #14 because I got too frustrated with the comments part of the challenge. I spent 40 minutes on it, and here’s my biggest takeaway. The slightly different variations of the template editing screen were just too confusing for me. As someone who has been trying to work in the FSE for a few months now, I was completely thrown off by the slightly different screen you got when you launch the template editor directly from a post vs the template editor you get when you go to edit site, and then select a template to edit.

@​​beckej in this comment.

I really prefer not to use the Post Editor template system and instead keep all templates in the Site Editor. As it creates a consistency in how templates are created. The Post Editor template system is very different compared to the Site Editor template system. It creates a confusion in how templates are created. I look forward to being able to create multiple Post and Page templates in the Site Editor and have a simple system to where I can choose which posts and pages to attach any template to.

@paaljoachim  in this comment.

For any designers and developers who want to see someone walk through the experience, I want to also mention the following videos to check out and skip around to see the call for testing in action:

• Social Learning Space recording (1 hour 11 min).
• @beckej’s YouTube recording of his testing experience with timestamps here for important moments (33 min).

Here’s an example of what was created from @greenshady for this call for testing (he went above and beyond per usual): 

Here’s another example of what was created with a lovely color palette by @alixnotes:

Confirmed Bugs

One of the testers for @courane01’s session experienced the editor crash when testing list view and attempting to modify a color but I was unable to replicate this across a few different attempts. Outside of that, the following bugs were found:

• List v2: add focus next list item after using sibling inserter (fixed in 13.3).
• List V2: Fix outdent on empty list item when pressing enter (fixed in 13.3).
• List V2: deleting sub items requires deleting twice.

When I added a sibling list item, the cursor was not in the item to start typing; I had to manually place the cursor in the list item.

@antigone7 in this comment.

Feature Requests 

Since this test explored two experimental iterations of current blocks (List and Quote), much of the feature requests centered on these items. 

• List v2: better paste handling.
• List v2: add the ability to have more options than just bullets or 1,2, 3.
• List v2: convert markdown based lists to list blocks.
• Quote V2: show citation block at all times.
• Quote v2: Desire for a citation block with padding/margin controls (previously reported). This is under discussion and noted for now.
• Radius controls: Show location on hover (fixed in 13.3).
• Borders: enable box-shadow options (previously reported). 

It would be nice if I could copy and paste a list and have it automatically detect that and make it a list.

@courane01 in this comment.

I assumed that the Add citation would be an inner block. I also assumed that I would be able to add padding/margin to the block. Both things are missing. 

@paaljoachim  in this comment.

A new template can only be created by going to a post and clicking on “New” in the settings under Template on the right. It would be much more intuitive if you could create a new template directly in the editor.

@hage in this comment.

Markdown-based lists are also not transformed into a List block when pasted into the editor. The formatting is lost, and each item gets absorbed into a Paragraph block.

@greenshady in this WP Tavern post. 

General Usability

As lightly mentioned in the high level overview, much of the feedback fell into this categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. with folks confused by the Template editor via the Post Editor, unsure of when they were editing the post vs template, and struggling to get layouts to cooperate (especially when it came to width controls). Sometimes these issues all combined with folks editing post content rather than the template and unable to adjust the width as they wanted as a result. Additional quotes are added below to better provide context:

• Feedback on sibling inserter experience in List V2 including how best to escape a list block (new issue).
• Desire for the ability to add a new post/page template in the Site Editor since the current Template Editor experience is visually different and disconnected. 
• Improved clarification between editing the contents of a template vs a post possibly through providing a way to view a template while editing a post and colorizing more global pieces. 
• Discard changes when moving between editing modes and/or allow for a way to discard changes since the interface will continually prompt you to save. 
• Update the font size options to be t-shirt sizes (small, medium, etc).
• Better communicate that adding a background color also adds padding. 
• Desire for consistent dimension controls across blocks since it’s currently commonplace for some blocks to have controls and options that others do not (ex: Post Author block vs AvatarAvatar An avatar is an image or illustration that specifically refers to a character that represents an online user. It’s usually a square box that appears next to the user’s name. block).
• Simplify the layout concept in order to make the controls easier to use to better ensure that when creating a new template the widths aren’t drastically different from the rest of the Post Content block. Tied to this, there needs to be a way to make it clear that a Group block needs to be added at all to have the widths be consistent. 

For this final item, here’s a quick video demonstrating the problem so folks can better understand this specific pain pointPain point Pain points are “places where you know from research or analytics that users are currently getting hung up and have to ask questions, or are likely to abandon the site or app.” — Design for Real Life in the template creation process:

I also had difficulty making the Comments section the same width as the Content Group. If I used a Group Block to contain the Comment Query LoopLoop The 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., then the comments themselves could be reduced in width (using the Inherit Layout option) , but the borders were still the full width.

@antigone7 in this comment.

Still trying to get “edge space” – ie margin from edge to orange borders I tried toggling on the “inherit default layout” This didnt make any different to the margin. It just changed the padding. I also added a zero to the block spacing field. Nothing changed. I tried changing the layout toggle to 80 % wide. This changed the internal padding of the block and didnt move the block away from the edges…Why are some settings in the block toolbar and some in the inspector? Why arn’t the same settings (where appropriate) in all similar blocks – ie padding, margins, width available in both groups, and columns?

@alixnotes in this comment.

Still in the template editor I went to view the post. Then trying to get back to the template editor I got the page editor which informed me that there was a saved version that contained changes. (I have been caught by this before – on my own site when making changes in the templates and then going to the page editor, if I had clicked on the revert to saved I potentially might have lost all the changes that I had just tried to make. This is confusing!).

@alixnotes in this comment.

The slightly different variations of the template editing screen were just too confusing for me. As someone who has been trying to work in the FSE for a few months now, I was completely thrown off by the slightly different screen you got when you launch the template editor directly from a post vs the template editor you get when you go to edit site, and then select a template to edit.

@beckej in this comment.

The different controls for different blocks makes it really hard to make something that is consistent and nice. I decided it would be cool to make the user pictures a little bit bigger, like that might make the comments more inviting. Since I made the commenters pictures so big, I said, let’s add in a Post Author block so that the post author’s picture will be shown too! Wait, the Avatar block in the Comments Query loop and the Post Author have completely different control? I can make the avatar any size, but the post author I have a dropdown with 3 choices? I can but a border radius on the avatar block, but not the post author block? If it’s a picture, I should have all the same tools available to me as any other block that uses a picture.

@beckej in this comment.

#fse-outreach-program, #fse-testing-summary