Howdy and happy Friday, everyone! How is Gutenberg coming along you ask? Version 7.8 was just released on Wednesday and focused mostly on the new UI refinements. This release included:
- Adds a current menu class to the Navigation block.
- Adds a block outline when interacting with the block toolbar.
- Polish around some icons.
- Polish around the Date Picker.
- and more…
Full site editing
Full site editing has seen some more design work recently. The extra effort reexamining the UX and having multiple people review design work is paying off! I’m super impressed with the recent work being done in light of other site building software I’ve been testing.
Placeholder blocks
Currently, templates need some way to show where certain blocks would exist, without necessarily showing actual content in them. Thus, we’ve been exploring placeholder blocks for many of the Post blocks like: Post Title, Post Author, Post Date, Post Comments, etc. These are being refined in this PR. https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/19256#issuecomment-604765696
A few UX flows are ready for development. How exciting!
- Isolating template parts: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/19253
- Mosaic view of templates: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/20477
- Display theme and template hierarchy: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/19252
Block Patterns
Patterns took a bit of a pivot recently. Figuring out imagery to include in the software is difficult. Do we want pictures of mountains? Or maybe natural patterns? Cars? We’re not settled on this. So rather than holding up our patterns, we’re working to build a few really nicely designed text-based patterns for now. These patterns should be customizable by themes, and not include custom CSS that makes for a difficult integration into websites.
New icons
There was a recent PR submitted that include several new icons that conform to the new G2 UI and the new icons being implemented throughout the interface. https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/21209
Get involved
Now’s a great time to get involved. While the work on this project is intense, it’s always important to glean new perspectives from other WordPress users and community members. Just drop into any of the links provided above to read up on the details and contribute.
Thanks for reading, staying informed, and contributing anywhere you can!