[ad_1] The block-based Navigation editor screen got a status check last week as part of a Hallway Hangout meeting aimed at identifying what needs to happen to bring the screen out from behind the “experimental” flag. Once the Navigation screen is available by default in the Gutenberg plugin, the team working on the feature will be able to gather more feedback. “The navigation block and navigation screen projects have been underway for quite some time and are a main target for 5.9,” Gutenberg lead developer Matias Ventura said in a post outlining the main focus items planned for the block editor in WordPress 5.9. “A large part of the remaining work is to improve the user experience, reduce complexity, and test as much as possible on themes.” Contributors participating in the meeting agreed that in order to move the Navigation screen out of the experimental stage, it will need to have UI/UX feature parity with what will soon be the classic Navigation screen (nav-menus.php). Participants came prepared with notes comparing features from the existing Navigation screen to the new block-based one. These are listed in a Google doc with a rough priority assignment. Trudging through the many discrepancies between the two Navigation editing experiences allowed the team to update the project’s tracking issue on GitHub. It is being reorganized to focus on the tasks required to move the block-based Navigation screen out of “experimental” status. Nearly two dozen issues have been designated as high priority and 32 are marked as normal. Work on the Navigation screen has stalled considerably since it was sidelined from consideration for WordPress 5.5 in July 2020. The previous tracking issue for the project became obsolete in February, forcing the creation of a new one that now aggregates all of the priority items for moving block-based Navigation forward. The recorded Hallway Hangout was a transparent discussion about what the UI is lacking and where it needs to go. It was a necessary, albeit tedious, accounting of issues that will get the project back on track. The UI is still in a very rough state. Nesting is rudimentary. It’s not possible to assign menu locations. Adding menu items between existing items is very difficult, among a number of other critical issues. At this point, it would require an extraordinary effort to extract the block-based Navigation screen from its quagmiry state in order to have it ready for prime time in WordPress 5.9. The release is expected in December 2021 – just three months away. David Smith, who facilitated the meeting, tempered expectations for the block-based Navigation screen with a few clarifications for what it will mean to take the feature out from under the “experimental” flag: We wouldn’t commit to feature parity of developer focused APIs at this stage. Removing “experimental” in the Gutenberg plugin, would not automatically make the feature ready for merging into Core (that won’t happen until WordPress 5.9 at the earliest). While the block-based Navigation screen landing in 5.9 doesn’t seem likely, contributors’ recent organizational efforts put them well on their way towards getting the project out from under the “experimental” flag. Check out the recorded meeting for a deep dive into the Navigation screen UI and a glimpse of where it’s headed. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingTag Archives: Gutenberg
Automattic Acquires Frontity, Founders to Work Full-Time on Gutenberg – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Frontity co-founders Pablo Postigo and LuisHerranz Automattic has acquired Frontity, the company behind an open source framework for building WordPress themes with React. The acquisition comes more than a year after the company raised €1M in funding in a round led by K Fund, with Automattic covering 22%. Frontity co-founders Pablo Postigo and Luis Herranz and their team will no longer be developing and maintaining the framework. Their new focus will be on contributing to the WordPress open source project and improving the full site editing developer experience. “After a series of conversations, Automattic offered to sponsor our team to work directly on the WordPress open source project,” Frontity’s founders said in the announcement. “In particular, to contribute our expertise in developer experience, frontend tooling, performance, and UX to the WordPress core itself, instead of doing so only for an external tool.” In a separate FAQ document, Frontity clarified that this acquisition does not mean the framework will be merged into WordPress, nor does it mean the team plans to bring React into the WordPress PHP or full site editing themes. The founders intend to apply their expertise to the Gutenberg project full time: Even though Frontity is a React framework, it doesn’t mean that we are going to push React to the WordPress frontend. We will look at the Gutenberg and full site editing space to identify those areas in which our work could have the most significant impact, and work closely with the WordPress community to help improve its developer experience. WordPress is already the best content platform on the web. We want to help it become the best development platform on the web. In addition to putting the Frontity team on improving developer experience, Automattic is also investing in other ways that expand its support of the Gutenberg project. The company has recently hired a new head of developer relations who is building out a team tasked with improving the developer experience with Gutenberg and full-site editing. Birgit Pauli-Haack is a new member of that team and Automattic is also sponsoring her curation of the Gutenberg Times publication and the Changelog Podcast. Frontity Framework Will Transition to a Community-Led Project As the result of the acquisition and the team’s reassignment to working on Gutenberg, Frontity’s founders are transitioning the framework to be a community-led project. The team has prepared to leave the project in “a stable, bug-free position,” with documentation regarding what features they were working on. The framework is used by many companies and agencies, including high profile sites like the TikTok Creator Portal, popular Catholic news site Aleteia, and Diariomotor, a popular Spanish automotive publication. “As far as we know, Automattic is not using Frontity Framework in any of its products,” Frontity CEO and co-founder Pablo Postigo said. “But we know there are a lot of Automatticians who have been following our progress closely. “We are aware that WordPress VIP does recommend Frontity for decoupled solutions, too. We are sure our experience and knowledge might be of help for this team as well.” The departure of Frontity’s founders and team introduces some uncertainty into the future of the framework. When asked if it can survive as a community-led project, Postigo was optimistic but not certain. “We still think that Frontity Framework is the best way to run a decoupled WordPress site with React and that this will be the case for a long time,” Postigo said. “It is still too early to know what will happen. Frontity has a great community behind it, there are a lot of great projects which are using the framework in production, and there’s also a nice group of really active contributors. We feel really positive about the future of the framework.” Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingGutenberg 11.3 Introduces Dimensions Panel, Adds Button Padding Support, and Speeds Up the Inserter – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Earlier today, Gutenberg 11.3 landed in the WordPress plugin directory. The latest update introduces a new dimensions panel for toggling spacing-related block options. The Button block now supports the padding control, and the Post Featured Image block has new width and height settings. One of the release’s highlights was a speed improvement for both opening and searching within the inserter. The opening time dropped over 200 ms, from 370.35 ms to 137.28 ms. Search speed went from 190.37 ms to 67.24 ms. The latest release includes a simplified color picker library. Rich previews for links, a feature introduced in Gutenberg 10.9 for external URLs, now works with internal site links. Theme authors should enjoy the reduced specificity of the reset and classic editor stylesheets. Such changes always make it a little easier for theme authors to match editor and front-end styling. Dimension Panel for Spacing Controls Toggling the padding and margin controls for the Site Tagline block. Gutenberg 11.3 introduces a new Dimensions panel for blocks that support either margin or padding controls. The feature adds an ellipsis (…) button in place of the typical open/close tab arrow. Users can select which controls they want to use. The long-term goal is to clean up the interface, only exposing controls that a user actually needs. Because such needs are subjective, allowing users to toggle them on/off is an ideal route to take. The current downsides are twofold. Once choosing to display margin or padding controls, the panel itself cannot be collapsed. This exacerbates the very problem that the new feature attempts to solve — decluttering the sidebar interface. For me, at least, I always want quick access to spacing controls. However, I do not always need them shown. The second issue is that the user choice of what to display does not seem to be stored. Each time you work with a block, you must select which controls should appear. The new Dimensions panel is only one part of the process of wrangling sizing (width and height), spacing (padding and margin), and related controls for blocks. Work toward a more well-rounded solution is still underway. Presumably, the development team will address these issues and others in future releases. However, those who run the Gutenberg plugin in production should expect oddities with usage. The Block Visibility plugin has the most user-friendly version of such a toggle control right now. It is not yet a perfect solution, but it works a little better than what is currently in Gutenberg. Button Block Padding Testing the new Button block padding option with TT1 Blocks. It is no secret that I dislike the default padding of the Button block when using the TT1 Blocks theme (block-based version of Twenty Twenty-One). I have made it one of my missions to routinely point it out, even going so far as refusing to use the block in the last call for testing as part of the FSE Outreach Program. An oversized button is not always the wrong stylistic choice on a webpage. Context matters and I somehow continue to run into scenarios where I need something a bit more scaled back. Control over the Button block’s padding has been on my wish list for months, and the Gutenberg development team delivered. As of 11.3, users can control the padding of individual Button blocks. It will now appear as an option within the new Dimensions panel mentioned earlier. Prayer answered. Now, let us move toward adding padding controls to all the blocks. The one potential issue some users might run into is maintaining consistent spacing when using multiple Button blocks together. The easiest way to do this is to add and style the first, then duplicate it to create others with the same spacing. This is not a new issue; it applies to all Button options where users want consistency within a group. Featured Image Dimension Controls Adjusting a Post Featured Image block’s dimensions. The Post Featured Image block has finally received a small but handy upgrade. In the past, users and theme authors only had a single option of deciding whether to link it to the post. Now, they can control the width and height of the image. If a user sets a height for the image, the editor will reveal a separate “Scale” option with the following choices: Cover (default) Contain Stretch What do these options actually do? That would be a good question. Even as someone in the web design and development loop for close to two decades, I sometimes forget and must look them up. They are values for the object-fit CSS property and are likely to confuse users in many instances. Cover and contain allow the image to fit within the containing element’s box while maintaining its aspect ratio (no stretching the image). The difference is that the cover value will be clipped if it does not fit and the contain value may be letterboxed. A stretch value will fill its container regardless of the aspect ratio. Depending on the image’s aspect ratio on its container, each of the values could essentially display the same thing on the screen. Or, they could provide wildly different results. Coupling these dimensions controls with wide and full alignments (also width-related options) could make for some unpredictable experiments too. The theme designer in me wants to disable the UI for this altogether and present something slightly more controlled: an image size selector. Such a selector should not be confused with width and height controls. WordPress theme authors have been registering custom image sizes for years. The primary use case for this was featured images. Users can use these sizes with the current Image and Latest Posts blocks. However, they do not yet have this option with Post Featured Image. I am in the camp that believes image size controls should have been the first addition to the block. It is such an integral part of WordPress theme design that it cannot be left out, and I have
Continue readingA Discussion With Gutenberg Project Lead Matías Ventura on the Barrier to Entry – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Last week, I published an opinion piece on the barrier to entry in the modern WordPress era. The article followed a tweet and post by Chris Wiegman that stated the current learning curve was extremely high, regardless of past experience. Members of the community responded with a flurry of articles, podcasts, and videos. Because modern WordPress is primarily centered on Gutenberg, I reached out to the project’s lead, Matías Ventura. The goal was to bring some balance to the discussion. Unfortunately, he could not get back to me until a few days after the story was published. However, given his unique insight and perspective on the project, his views should be shared. In our discussion, we covered the topic of the barrier to entry from multiple viewpoints. Depending on where a specific developer, designer, or user steps onto the ramp, each will have a different experience. Why Are We Having the Same Discussions? The block editor shipped with WordPress 5.0 in December 2018. We are closing in on three years, but it often feels like we are having the same discussions. One has to wonder why we have not yet moved beyond that point. “I think this is a case of the size of the WordPress community, its diversity of perspectives, and the fact that we do still have a lot of work to do to continue to make things accessible,” said Ventura. “I’ve seen people that start with no prior WP knowledge get flying super quickly.” He recounted one story of a popular block library that launched last year. The creators were designers but did not recognize themselves as developers. However, the APIs allowed them to build an entire plugin that would not have been possible with their previous skillset. “To me, this was a triumph of the block APIs that are available for builders,” said Ventura. “But this is just one person’s perspective. It doesn’t invalidate PHP developers expressing frustration at the complexities of modern front-end tools.” Theme Creation and New Onramps On the theme creation front, we were in agreement. There are new ways (and more on the way) for non-developers to ease into visually building various parts of a website without needing the entire weight of theme development knowledge. Ventura began his WordPress journey with theme development after first being exposed to Flash in the early 2000s. He recalled downloading a bunch of PHP files and thought he could execute by opening them. It is safe to say that he has learned a lot since then. “Being able to edit pieces of a theme is a crucial aspect of democratizing access to code,” he said. “I think we are going to be seeing a lot of people get started by diving into how templates work. Or by playing with the Query block, which used to be a hidden piece unless you knew a bit of PHP already.” He mentioned that, in some ways, this aspect of the block editor allowed solo creators or small teams to build unique projects, pointing to Aino as an example. “I’m seeing a ton of designers for whom contributing to WordPress was difficult or a gated experience,” he said. “There’s a lot of developer entitlement when we say things used to be easy. They were not easy for a large chunk of the population that might have been excellent contributors if there were more avenues to contribute.” Patterns may be the first official stepping stone, one avenue among many that WordPress could facilitate in the future. Ventura envisions a possible .ORG-hosted visual theme builder that would allow users to create and publish without ever touching code. We are likely years from seeing such a project come to fruition, but lofty goals can lead to innovative ideas that we have yet to think of. Building Block Plugins Block plugins are a different beast than themes. The barrier is undoubtedly higher, but how big is this hurdle for traditional WordPress developers? “Going from contributing a pattern to building a block is a big leap right now,” said Ventura. “While there are folks that can learn it quickly, it’s still a big barrier for people. I think there are several layers to this: documentation could be an order of magnitude better in both organization and presentation. I hope we can do a lot more there.” He is also curious about tools for building blocks, such as a blend of BlockBook and CodePen. He mulled over the possibility of blocks used for creating other blocks, a scenario in which developers might only need to write HTML with the tool interpreting features like Rich Text fields. At the very least, he believes we are barely scratching the surface of what the block-building experience could be. “The biggest challenge is that there’s a tendency in PHP trained folks to neglect a bit the implications on the UX if it means the developer experience is simpler,” he said. “I think this is most visible in the shortcode/forms approach to UX as opposed to direct manipulation, which is hard to codify from a PHP set of APIs.” WordPress/Gutenberg Contribution and the Bus Factor Outside of building themes or plugins, the third and arguably the highest level of participating in the WordPress development ecosystem is direct contributions to the block system. Is contributing to core harder today than it was just a few years ago? “I think this is a good point, but I think it partially misses that contributing to WP internals like WP_Query was also very difficult,” he said. “We just got used to it. We have received more contributions to Gutenberg from people than what I have seen in Trac in my years there.” Ventura did admit that GitHub could be a factor in the amount of contribution, which many developers tend to favor over Trac. While building an editor is a difficult task and requires certain levels of expertise, other parts of the system, such as the component library or smaller packages, might offer
Continue readingGutenberg 11.2 Expands Color Support for Search and Pullquote Blocks, Introduces Experimental Flex Layout for Group Block – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Gutenberg 11.2.0 was released today with expanded color support for the Search and Pullquote blocks. Historically, customizing these elements has been out of reach for most users if their themes didn’t include them as options. This release introduces color support and border color support for the search button. Pullquotes are getting a similar treatment with border and color support, enabling some creative design options for those who enjoy taking the reins on customization. It’s these kinds of minute style changes that web developers would have been paid to perform back in the earlier days of theme customization gigs. Now the block editor enables anyone to jump in and do it themselves. These color support additions are part of a larger effort to improve the editor’s design tools to provide consistent application across blocks. “Another important goal of design tools is ensuring a wide range of exquisitely crafted patterns are possible; that best practices are not only possible but encouraged; and that customizing blocks is a consistent and natural experience,” Gutenberg Lead Architect Matias Ventura said in the ticket tracking design tool tasks. Gutenberg 11.2 also introduces support for a new experimental flex layout. The need for additional layouts was described by Rick Banister in a ticket submitted a year ago, requesting a “display horizontal” option for the Group block: When building patterns or trying to achieve a layout with multiple elements arranged horizontally it would help to have a parent block that would automatically arrange its children on a single line. Columns can be used to arrange things side-by-side, but they add quite a lot of extra nesting if you only need to arrange one set of blocks. We could leverage the Group block and add a ‘display horizontally’ or ‘act as a row’ option to it. It would wrap its children and act as a ‘flex container’ (display:flex; flex-direction:row;). Further flex parameters could be optional to align and distribute objects. A flex layout option has the potential to remove some of the complexity in nesting blocks. This early prototype shows a rough, unfinished UI for a layout switcher. It shows the difference between a flex layout and the default “flow” layout, which displays children one after the other vertically without any specific styles. The PR included in Gutenberg 11.2 makes it possible for blocks to support multiple layouts. Gutenberg engineer Riad Benguella said the plan is to introduce more layouts, such as “grid” and “absolute positioning container.” Adding “flex” layout support for the group block is the first step towards proving how multi-layout options can work in the block editor. “In the previous WordPress release, we introduced the layout config and the __experimentalLayout prop for inner blocks,” Benguella said. “The initial reason for these was to make alignments and content widths more declarative for themes. While this was an ambitious goal on its own and a hard one to achieve for the default layout, the goal has always been to absorb and support more kinds of layouts in the editor than the regular vertical list of blocks.” This experimental flex layout support can be useful for theme developers and makes sense in certain use cases with the Cover block, headers, social icons, columns, and other applications. The layout switcher UI is hidden in this release while the Gutenberg team works on a better design and wording for the feature. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingGutenberg 11.1 Adds Drag-and-Drop Support for List View and Upgrades Block Borders – WP Tavern
[ad_1] The Gutenberg plugin continues to march forward. Yesterday’s release, coming merely a day after the launch of WordPress 5.8, brings several new features and nearly three dozen bug fixes. The big-ticket items are drag-and-drop blocks in the list view and a much-needed upgrade for border support. Theme authors should enjoy the ability to control the Columns block’s stacking on mobile and some updated design controls for nav menus. While labeled an “enhancement,” themers should also check their designs against a breaking change to the RSS block’s updated styles. Drag and Drop Blocks in List View Dragging a block around in list view. Drumroll, please. The moment we — or at least many of us — have been waiting for has finally arrived. The editor’s list view has become a powerhouse for managing long documents with many blocks. Over the past dozen or so releases, the development team has continued to tack on necessary feature after necessary feature. In version 11.1, users can drag and drop blocks from within the list view to order and organize content. However, users are not merely limited to moving things around within the list view itself. They can drag blocks from the list over into the content canvas and vice versa. I do not often use emoji, but sometimes I like to dole out a slow clap for a job well done. 👏 👏 Border Support Adding a dashed border to a Group block. I have already been having a bit of fun with the new border options. Lately, I have been in the holiday spirit because I was getting ahead and buying my Christmas tree in July (when you find the good deals). This inspired me to create a coupon code block pattern, and the Group block’s border support was perfect for this. Gutenberg 11.1 refines the user experience for border options. The development team tightened the UI and placed the settings into logical groupings. Only the following core blocks have partial or complete border support: Button Group Image Search Table Users can also define individual corners with the border-radius option in this update. I would love to see the same treatment for the top, right, bottom, and left borders in the future. I also would not mind seeing a double-border style. Columns Block: Stack on Mobile Adding post metadata to an unstacked set of columns. By default, individual Column blocks will stack on top of each other in mobile views. However, users can now disable this via the parent Columns block on a case-by-case basis. This has also been one of the missing pieces for more layout control in block themes. One of the primary use cases for a Columns block that does not break on mobile devices is post metadata sections that should be inline. For example, theme authors often want to align the post author, date, and comments link in a single row below the post title. This toggle switch sort of moves us in that direction. However, it is a stopgap solution that does not afford theme designers the flexibility they are accustomed to with CSS (this is not generally a complicated affair). Before block themes and the site editor are rolled into core WordPress, theme developers will need fine-tuned responsive control over the Columns block and, perhaps, some type of row/inline/flex block to go along with it. Theme authors who need to target the Columns block based on whether mobile stacking is disabled can use the .is-not-stacked-on-mobile class. Post Terms and Tag Clouds Controlling the number of tags output. The development team has crossed one of my months-long pet peeves off the list. In past releases of the plugin, the Post Terms block (variations of Post Tags and Post Categories) has displayed a pipe (|) separator between individual items by default. It now shows a comma, followed by a space. Theme authors can change this in their block templates, and users can customize it from the editor. The setting is located under the “Advanced” tab in the block options sidebar. The Tag Cloud block got a small but much-needed upgrade. Users can now set a limit on the number of tags to display. By default, it is set to show 45 tags. Navigation Submenu Colors The Gutenberg development team added two new color options for the Navigation block. Aside from its existing text and background colors, users can now change the text and background colors for submenu items. The Navigation block, while improved, still seems to be one of the trickiest pieces of the site-editing puzzle. It is trying to be the Jack of all trades, mastering few — if any — solutions. And, there is already a ticket gaining traction that would allow users to stuff a wider range of inner blocks into it. But, we have submenu text and background colors, which is a win. Only, they are named “Overlay Text” and “Overlay Background.” I am unsure whether it works as part of the mobile responsive menu. Gutenberg seems to have once again failed to bundle its front-end navigation JavaScript. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingIntroduction to WordPress (Gutenberg) Block Filters • WPShout
[ad_1] Like many, I’m still very much getting my sea legs when it comes to doing wed-development tasks that affect aspects of the (Gutenberg) Block Editor. While its no longer new, it’s never really overlapped very clearly with work either I (or a client) have needed to do, so I’m very much in learning mode with this article from Dmitry Mayorov over at CSS-Tricks. All that is to say: if you click over and this entire article just goes over your head, have no fear (you likely won’t need to do this stuff anytime soon) and I get you. For those of you who aren’t lost when terms like ES6, JSX, and React come up, I really do think this article is great intro to a topic I’m sure I’ll need to use… sometime. His adding of the size attribute to the button element is actually rather similar to a task I failed and gave up on a few months ago. Happy hacking! Visit css-tricks.com → [ad_2] Source link
Continue reading#5 – Robert Jacobi on Why He’s Putting Gutenberg First – WP Tavern
[ad_1] WP Tavern #5 – Robert Jacobi on Why He’s Putting Gutenberg First Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:43:35 Subscribe Share About this episode. On the podcast today we have Robert Jacobi. Robert is Director of WordPress at Cloudways. He’s been working with open source software for almost twenty years, and has been the president of Joomla, a member of Make WordPress Hosting and contributor to ICANN At-Large. He is well known for his public speaking about open source and so the discussion today is broad and thought provoking. We talk about Robert’s ‘Gutenberg First’ approach in which he places the WordPress Block Editor at the heart of all that he does. He sees Gutenberg as a critical component for WordPress’ future; a future in which as yet unimagined technologies will be built on top of Gutenberg and leverage the ‘atomic’ way data is stored. This leads to a discussion on how 3rd party developers will be able to use Gutenberg as an application platform, with unique pathways to create, store and display content. The heritage of Gutenberg’s development is also discussed. Right from the start we knew that the intention of the project was ambitious; it’s aim to become a full site editor was explained at the outset. This has led to comparisons with other editing tools and Robert takes on why he thinks that the incremental steps that the Gutenberg project has taken are making it a vital part of WordPress. We also look forward and get into the subject of how technology never stands still. The underpinnings of WordPress are shifting. New skills and tools will need to be learned, but that does not mean that existing ones are obsolete.Shifting gears, we move into community events and how we’ve managed events during the last year. Robert is a huge proponent of in-person events, and is hoping for their return. He loves the accidental situations which arise when you’re in the same space as so many other like-minded people. Perhaps though, there’s a place for hybrid events; events in which there’s in-person and online happening at the same time? Towards the end we chat about the plethora of mergers and acquisitions which are happening right now, as well as a discussion of Openverse, a search engine for openly licensed media, which was launched with little fanfare recently. Useful links. Openverse Robert’s website Transcript Nathan Wrigley [00:00:00] Welcome to the fifth edition of the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast all about WordPress and the community surrounding it. Every month, we’re bringing you someone from that community to discuss a topic of current importance. If you like the podcast, why not subscribe on your podcast player? You can do that by going to WP Tavern dot com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. If you have any thoughts about the podcast, perhaps a suggestion of a potential guest or subject, then head over to WP Tavern dot com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox. There’s a contact form there, and we’d certainly welcome your input. Okay, so on the podcast today, we have Robert Jacobi. Robert is director of WordPress at Cloudways. He’s been working with open source software for almost 20 years and has been president of Joomla, a member of Make WordPress Hosting and contributor to ICANN At-Large. He’s well known for his public speaking about open source, and so the discussion today is broad and thought provoking. We talk about Robert’s Gutenberg first approach in which he places the WordPress block editor at the heart of all that he does. He sees Gutenberg as a critical component for WordPress’ future, a future in which as yet unimagined technologies will be built on top of Gutenberg and leverage the atomic way that data is stored. This leads to a discussion of how third party developers will be able to use Gutenberg as an application platform with unique pathways to create, store and display content. The heritage of Gutenberg’s development is also discussed. Right from the start we knew that the intention of the project was ambitious. It’s aim to become a full site editor was explained at the outset. This has led to comparisons with other editing tools and Robert takes on why he thinks that the incremental steps that the Gutenberg project has taken are making it a vital part of WordPress. We also look forward and get into the subject of how technology never stands still. The underpinnings of WordPress are shifting. New skills and tools will need to be learned, but that does not mean that existing ones are obsolete. Shifting gears, we move into the community events and how we’ve managed events during the last year. Robert is a huge proponent of in-person events and is hoping for their return. He loves the accidental situations which arrive when you’re in the same space as so many other like-minded people. Perhaps though there’s a place for hybrid event. Events in which there’s in-person and online happening at the same time. Towards the end, we chat about the plethora of mergers and acquisitions, which are happening right now, as well as a discussion of Openverse, a search engine for openly licensed media, which launched with little fanfare recently. If any of the points raised in this podcast resonate with you, be sure to head over and find the post at WP Tavern dot com forward slash podcast, and leave a comment there. And so without further delay, I bring you Robert Jacobi. I am joined by Robert Jacobi on the podcast today. How are you Robert? Doing well. Fantastic to be here. Thank you Nathan. Nathan Wrigley [00:04:09] Would you mind introducing yourself? Tell us who you are and what’s your relationship with technology and work? I’m Robert Jacobi director of WordPress at Cloudways. I’ve been in the open source space, wow, for almost 20
Continue readingGutenberg 11.0 Releases Over 70 Bug Fixes
[ad_1] Hey, WordPress fans. We are checking in with your latest dose of weekly WordPress news. This week, Gutenberg version 11.0 is released with new features and a massive amount of bug fixes. The development team has been working hard in preparation for WordPress 5.8. You can check out a full list of the updates in the release notes. Beyond that, the second release candidate for WordPress 5.8 is now available. If you haven’t tested its features yet, now is the time before the final release on July 20. Let’s get to all of this week’s WordPress news… WORDPRESS NEWS AND ARTICLES TUTORIALS AND HOW-TOS RESOURCES [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingGutenberg 11.0 Includes Over 70 Bug Fixes, Continues Improving With WordPress 5.8 Just Two Weeks Away – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Gutenberg 11.0 landed yesterday with a pile of changes. The development team has been moving fast, and it shows. For a two-week cycle, version 11.0 includes an insane number of bug fixes. Contributors squashed over 70 in this release alone. This seems to be in preparation for WordPress 5.8, which is expected to land on July 20. The upcoming block-based Widgets screen had the lion’s share of bugs. However, the block library had nearly two dozen, many of those issues with new theme-related blocks. The downside of such a massive release is that there are too many features and not enough time to cover them all. I will be cherry-picking some of my favorites, but feel free to dive into the release notes for a complete picture. Theme and Template-Editing Mode Changes One of the primary Full Site Editing features making its way to WordPress 5.8 will be disabled by default for most users. In a rare move from the core project, the template editor will be opt-in, at least for users with classic themes. It is opt-out for block themes. As I wrote last month, until users are on actual block themes, the template editor is “a sort-of-OK-but-kind-of-amazing landing page creator.” Template-editing is really only as good as the weakest link in the system. This will almost always be the theme over the next few months. Because the template editor is a new feature that directly attempts to overwrite the front-end output, it will always be at odds with many themes that were never designed with it in mind. The opt-in approach is unlikely the best route to mass adoption, but it is in the interest of the user experience. Making it opt-in also allows theme authors to make template editing a smooth experience. Gutenberg 11.0 introduces a new defaultBlockTemplate editor setting. Theme authors can create the default blocks that users begin with when creating a new template. Starting with a custom default block template. Ideally, this default template should include some base layout components, such as a header, footer, and post/page content. However, themers are free to put their own spin on this. For more information on creating default block templates, theme authors should read Themes Team rep Carolina Nymark’s overview of WordPress 5.8 theme features. Media & Text Block: Drag-and-Drop Media Replacement Dragging a new media file into the Media & Text block. Users have long been able to drag and drop an initial image or video into the Media & Text block. However, they were unable to replace it using the same method. Gutenberg 11.0 creates a new “drop zone” over the media column, making it easy to change the media to something new. The feature already exists with the Cover and Image blocks, so this change brings Media & Text up to date. We probably should have had this feature months ago, but the patch sat in limbo waiting for a code review. Accessibility: Categories Dropdown Has Label Label difference between the Archives and Categories blocks. The development team added a new “Categories” label when the Categories block is shown as a dropdown. This is a welcome improvement to help those using screen-readers better navigate the page. The problem with this change is the lack of consistency. In Gutenberg 10.8, the team removed the .screen-reader-text class for the Archives block label, making it appear on screen for all users. These types of inconsistencies that seem trivial on the surface tend to pile up, creating code bloat for theme designers in the long run as they try to wrangle them. I would prefer both labels to be marked as screen-reader text. Regardless of the default, the two should match. Then, throw in an option for the end-user to decide whether to show the label similar to how the Search form handles it. The Return of Post Classes Post classes appear for Post Template block. For those theme designers who need them, Gutenberg 11.0 brings back post classes. If you are wondering where posts classes had gone, you may not be alone. In the world of blocks, they are not needed as much as they once were. Traditionally, WordPress theme authors used these classes to dynamically change the output of a post based on contexts such as type, format, category, and more. When the Post Template block (formerly named Query Loop) was introduced, there was a noticeable lack of the traditional classes attached to the wrapper for individual posts. This latest update brings them back. In the future, block themes will likely rely on these classes less and less. With much of the design configuration moving to theme.json files and user-controlled options, it is probably time to say goodbye to one of the core features of theme design over the past decade. However, it is a comfort to know it is there when needed. Decimals Allowed in Spacing Controls For those who are particular about getting their margin and padding just right, they can finally rejoice. Spacing controls now allow for decimal values and not just whole numbers. In past versions of the plugin, a value such as 1.5 would be rounded up to 2. When used with rem and em units, such rounding created a 50% difference between the intended spacing and reality. I am happy about this one. It is a fix for one of the tickets I opened (hooray for contributing!). However, I cannot take credit for fixing the problem. That honor goes to Themes Team representative Ari Stathopoulos. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
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