This post is a summary of the Front Page Fun call for testing for the FSE outreach program, the twenty-second 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 jump into this call for testing and for more creativity in what we are able to test.
Shout out to @pagelab and @valmedia2023 as first time contributors for this call for testing. Expect a badge on your WordPress profiles for your contribution!
High level summary
In general, the call for testing was relatively tame bug wise, with only a few obvious ones found, mainly in the Navigation block 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.. The usability feedback related to many ongoing projects in the Site Editor underscoring the impact of solving these consistent problems, in particular the clarification of the content <> template relationship and confusion around the overall experience of managing pieces of navigation. Most participants were perplexed by the “hybrid” content editing option in the Navigation section, which suddenly appeared, causing one person to believe they had encountered a bug.
While the new Grid layout type was the primary focus of the testing call, feedback on it was limited to suggestions for consolidating the various options between the grid layout, Columns block, Gallery block, and Table block. Despite being a focal point, there was little mention of patterns in the template creation experience, suggesting that the consistency in pattern mental model was successful.
First: the Instawp link was precious, and made everything work smoothly right away. The editor is becoming quite powerful, and I am increasingly enjoying the flexibility of working with blocks, layouts, patterns, and templates…However, it boils down to a higher cognitive load overall while performing tasks in the editor, compared to the classic editing experience. It is powerful, but it creates multiple contexts for similar operations, with an increasingly greater number of options and pop-ups. It is getting better, though. I know some of this can be attributed to the newness of everything, and it will take time until I — and everyone else — feel completely at home in the editor. We’re in a transitional era where users — and even developers — are becoming visual site builders, so I think this is inevitable.
@pagelab in this comment.
It is incredible that I can create new pages from the menu and can edit the pages from the same site without having to page by page editing our content. Specially interesting to create a website for clients.
@soivigol in this comment.
I created three draft pages: biography, discography, and buy. I assumed that the draft page referred to in the dark grey sidebar 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. under Navigation was the “page posts” page. Since we had only created draft pages before, seeing them listed under the new Navigation 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. oriented me towards a page content editing function. But when I was presented with “a page with many texts inside, which didn’t look like a page but should be a page,” I became completely disoriented. 🙃 I even created another local instance of WordPress, thinking that I had encountered a bug.
@Franz00 in this comment.
Bugs
The Navigation block featured heavily in this call for testing, leading to most new issues touching on the current experience with three folks mentioning a delay in proper naming of draft pages. The experience of adding a new page in the Site Editor experience is an important one, particularly with the backdrop of adding content editing.
New:
Previous:
It doesn’t always display the full word “Inspiration” depending on how fast I type or pause while typing. Sometimes “Inspira” or “Inspirati”. Some sort of confused debouncing behavior.
@robglidden in this comment.
Feature Requests
Folks requested a few features in this call for testing mainly around the specifics of creating navigation and how that relates to using the Site Editor at large.
New:
Previous
Going to the Editor. For a short moment I see Styles, Templates and Template Parts. Suddenly a half second later I see Navigation at the top. It is distracting seeing 3 areas and then a moment later 4 areas. I have sometimes clicked almost immediately and then I have end up clicking into the wrong area.
@paaljoachim in this comment.
I miss the list view while editing on a mobile device as there’s no quick way to visualize the block structure without it. It is the most reliable and stable UI 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. navigation point within the block editor, in my opinion.
@pagelab in this comment.
General usability
Usability feedback repeated much of what’s already known and is actively being worked on, including the tension between templates <> content and improvements to adding links to the Navigation block by reducing the number of steps needed.
Personally, I miss having all my content (posts, pages, categories) and navigation options visible at once, all the time, without having to see a bunch of other options for other tasks. It’s just easier than clicking three or four times in the site editor UI, in multiple places, just to see what content is available to add as a menu item.
@pagelab in this comment.
The Grid block is a very small beginning of something that can expand into something very useful. That can become a base for the Columns, Table and Gallery blocks. With each their own variation/unique features.
@paaljoachim in this comment.
The site already had a Navigation section and I wanted to rearrange the one I just created. But the Navigation section in the sidebar did not let me select which of the menus I wanted to adjust. It just took one of the oldest ones I had. I expected that somewhere perhaps on the bottom that I would be able to switch menus and even select which is primary and as well as other selections in how a specific menu is to be used.
@paaljoachim in this comment.
In the new pages, it was confusing. I didn’t see where I had written the new content. When I changed to edit About page, then I can see how I had written the new content in the Post Content Block. Then, I went back to the new pages and I had to search the Post Content Block in List View to edit correctly the pages… when we go to edit new pages, I think that the Post Content Block should have a placeholder to see where to begin to write or add new content.
@soivigol in this comment.
#fse-testing-summary
