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

• InstaWP for allowing the outreach program to use their tooling for free, enabling more folks to participate in the Find Your Style call for testing and for more creativity in what we were able to test. 
• Replay.IO for trialing their software for the WordPress project and the various folks helping use it for this last call for testing. 
• @courane01 and @arasae for running group testing with Learn WordPress.
• @jordesign for gathering and summarizing feedback from a crew of folks from Automattic. 

Shout out to @arasae for being the sole first time contributor for this call for testing. Expect a badge on your WordPress profiles for your contribution! Here’s a poem from ChatGPT to commemorate:

Oh, here's a badge for you, my friend,
For contributing to testing's end.
In the WordPress project you did your part,
Finding bugs and fixing them with all your heart.

You clicked and typed with skill and glee,
Making sure that WordPress works perfectly.
Your efforts are what makes this site so grand,
So here's a badge, take it with a smile, hold it in your hand.

It may be silly, it may be fun,
But the hard work you've done can't be undone.
So wear this badge with pride and might,
For you are a champion of the testing site!

High-level summary 

Feedback around the various style features was positive across the board, from the smaller features like applying styles globally or exploring the Stylebook. The value add and experience is clear with limited confusion around what each feature was doing. What remained for style items centered on feature requests, like the ability to have revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. or for the randomizer to impact more color items, and usability feedback around things like the Settings icon changing. 

Outside of styling related feedback, this test also focused on importing items from a classic theme to a 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. theme. The current experience of importing widgets, while functional, leaves a lot to be desired both in terms of additional optionality, like being able to import menus, and intuitiveness, particularly around how importing overwrites the current template part that was added. Much of the more critical feedback centered around this new pathway. 

While not the main focus of the experience, it’s clear that the reimagined Site Editor experience with the introduction of Browse Mode is allowing folks to better navigate between pieces of one’s site and add good friction to the editing process. 

For deeper context of someone going through the experience, here’s a video from @paaljoachim who has completed every single call for testing: 

Separately, you can also watch a recap of group testing with Learn WordPress on WordPress TV. 

First, I am in love with the new Site Editor 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.. It’s exactly how I hoped it would be — so easy to get around with fewer clicks. Creating the new footer template part and importing the widgets was easy peasy.

@itsjustdj in this comment.

Making a change to a headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. or footer or some other template part being used in all templates and then applying it globally was really helpful!

@paaljoachim in this comment. 

Once I found the Style Book, I liked the range of items I could edit. If I can edit the style of the menu, I would like to edit the mobile menu. Or make edits that only apply to the mobile version of the site. The lack of edit options for the mobile view reflects a question I am often asked by users, at least twice a week, “how do I edit my menu on mobile?

@jordesign in this comment.

“Push changes to Global Styles” worked really well…I was used to just starting to edit the Template, but the Edit button keeps me from messing something up before I’m actually ready to edit. I really appreciate that Edit button! 

@antigone7 in this comment. 

Honestly, I found creating a menu like classic themes more user-friendly. Maybe as an alternative a (new) block named “Classic Navigation Block” or something like that could be developed, which offers the options of a classic menu creation, but additionally the properties of the navigation block (color, fonts, typography, spacing, etc.) if possible.  

@hage in this comment.

Confirmed Bugs

The following bugs were found in the current experience, one of which has not yet been replicated but was reported a few times.

New:

• Widget Importer: ensure it works with importing menus
• Navigation block: custom menu not imported. This was noted three times but has been difficult to properly replicate.
• Styles: adding border to Image adds same border to Gallery.
• Featured Image block: applying styles globally resets the border changes in the editor

Previous:

• Navigation toolbar overlaps on submenu links when opening sidebar settings or when using a smaller viewport.

When I first opened the Site Editor, at first the Header Navigation menuNavigation Menu A theme feature introduced with Version 3.0. WordPress includes an easy to use mechanism for giving various control options to get users to click from one place to another on a site. was not the menu that I had created before changing themes. The menu that showed was the All Pages menu, even though I didn’t have an All Pages menu before changing themes. When I left the Editor and came back, then my previously created “Main” menu appeared correctly.

@antigone7 in this comment. 

It appears that some styles are universal instead of individual categories, which I thought would be the case from how “Style Book” is named. For example, I would think that users would change the borders setting to individual Images only, but the editor applied the same changes to Gallery as well. 

@jordesign in this comment.

Feature Requests 

Items related to Browse Mode nicely matched what’s already being designed and built as the 6.2 cycle continues. What remains below matches what’s been raised previously and touches on some of what needs to be considered for phase 3, particularly around wanting better access to revisions.

• Browse Mode: Consider adding in descriptions of template after selection. Completed in 15.2 and backported to 6.2.
• Browse Mode: Consider adding a pointer for how to get back to dashboard. Completed in 15.2 and backported to 6.2.
• Browse Mode: Desire for three dot menu to be able to take actions, like deleting. 
• Style Randomizer: change colors of links.
• Navigation: Disable direct insert.
• Style randomizer: ensure colors are accessible.
• Design tools: Better handling of unset / inherited values.
• Widget Importer: Offer a way to select multiple widget areas for import.
• Standardized way to modify interactive states (:hover, :focus .etc) for blocks.
• Desire to style Navigation block differently for “mobile menu”.
• Template inspector: Surface revisions panel.

The randomizer is fun. However it produces some non-accessible colors for Primary, Secondary and Tertiary, at least over a black background.

@robglidden in this comment.

Adding a yellow as background color I noticed that the Header template part is not all the way in the top of the page. I am curious why the Header is not nudged up against the top admin/canvas tool bar. I see the same on the frontend. Header is not all the way in the top of the page. It would be helpful to have the header in the top with no space above it. To where I need to explore how to remove the margin from somewhere in the header to get the header in the top of the page.

@paaljoachim in this comment. 

With all the various changes I’ve done, I couldn’t help but notice the need of “what if” and wanted to use a previous style, but because I refreshed the editor, I couldn’t use a previous setup so I really felt the need of a revision system.

@jordesign in this comment.

General Usability

Simplifying the importing 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. process, confusion around the new Settings icon, and desire for clarity in returning to one’s dashboard with Browse Mode dominated the critical usability feedback. This last piece of feedback has already been addressed in time for the WordPress 6.2 release. Positive feedback balanced out the discussion when it came to using the Styling features, having one’s custom menu automatically imported, and using Browse Mode. The base experience of improved out of the box defaults, customization tools, and moving between pieces of one’s site continues to ease and is reflected in the responses. 

• Improve importing widgets from classic to block theme UX, including a desire for a better out of the box experience with layout options. 
• Feedback: It is confusing that adding background color also adds padding.
• Consider reverting back the Settings Icon to the Gear
• Styles: Using ‘Reset’ while a variation is active resets to the default theme style instead of the variation style.
• Stylebook: Difficult Keyboard Navigation.

I created a new footer template part named “My New Footer” but when I imported the widgets into it, it created an entirely new template part named “Widget area: footer” and deleted “My New Footer” (though it still existed in Template Parts).

@robglidden in this comment.

After importing the footer widget contents, it looked really messy and it wasn’t immediately clear in the list view as to how everything was ‘stacked’ or laid out. It took adding a new column block to the footer and dragging/dropping the footer groups into each column, to have it appear in a neater and more coherent way.

@jordesign in this comment.

A Noticing: There was no padding or margin added around the new Widgets Footer at all when they were first moved over from classic theme to block theme; I wonder if there is a way to match the padding or margins of this new Widget area to match the existing look and feel of the site?

@arasae in this comment.

It took me a moment to find and get used to the Block Settings icon — I kept looking for the gear. But it makes sense to use a different icon, since the gear icon is now used to differentiate from styles in those settings. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

@itsjustdj in this comment.

It is not clear that one needs to click the W to return to the Dashboard. Cursor changes to a finger but it is not obvious where it would go. Here it would be helpful with some kind of some sort. Perhaps a tooltip over the W which says something like “Return to Dashboard” ?

@paaljoachim in this comment. 

Inside “Style Books,” it’s hard to scroll through the different “Style Books” without a mouse, and it does not appear to work with the arrow keys on your keyboard.

@jordesign in this comment.

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