This post summarizes the latest bi-weekly Block-based Themes meeting (agenda, slack transcript). This meeting was held in the #themereview Slack channel on Wednesday, June 17, 2020, 12:00 PM EDT and was moderated by @jffng.
Gutenberg Update
New Features
Gutenberg 8.3.0 was released last week with a host of new features. Specifically for themes, two new experimental theme supports are available:
- Cover Blocks experimental padding control. To enable this, themes need to declare
add_theme_support( 'experimental-custom-spacing' )to see the new controls. Documentation is forthcoming for the Theme Developer Handbook.
- Control link color in the paragraph, heading, group, columns, and media & text blocks. This can potentially override a theme’s hover state, so theme developers may need to find a workaround. This enhancement sets the stage for theme.json to eventually handle link styles. Themes can opt-in by declaring
add_theme_support( 'experimental-link-color' )and get the following additional controls:
Also merged in 8.3 a FSE bug fix solving an issue that occurred when the theme supplied an index.html but no front-page.html, causing the site editor to appear blank. It also creates an index.html so that if the theme has no fallback template.
@aristath’s related utility code in the Theme Experiments repo helps with the opposite side of this problem — installing an experimental FSE theme that doesn’t have Gutenberg installed.
In progress theme-based Gutenberg PRs and Issues
On the global styles / theme.json front, there is an issue that asks if theme presets be expanded to line-height, padding, and margin. Subsequent PRs trying out implementing presets for line-height and padding include PR 23177 and PR 23176. There is discussion around whether these presets should be added via add_theme_support (as they were for link color) or if working via theme.json is all that is needed.
This led to a discussion of the proposed hierarchy/relationship between theme.json and add_theme_support. @richtabor foresees theme.json being the owner of the vast majority of these sorts of design defaults, with add_theme_support as the “in-between” for now, or the logic-based overrides of theme.json. @kjellr, @poena, @aristath disagreed saying experimental-themes.json provided more flexibility for a clean start in FSE so long as it supports the logic provided currently by add_theme_support. An issue is now open in GitHub for wider discussion.
Open Floor
@prtksxna asked if themes should register block styles for full-site blocks like site-title or post-title. @acosmin pointed out theme authors can register any block styles but can’t register blocks in themes at the present time.
@poena asked if other FSE users have encountered an issue where changes to html files are not reflected in the site editor and is looking for additional testing.
@jffng reminded the group the #fse-outreach-experiment channel is open in Slack. If you have questions or want to provide feedback, join there.
#meeting-notes, #gutenberg, #full-site-editing, #block-based-themes