Hello! This is the 75th roundup of theme-related discussions, fixes, and developments in Gutenberg. It’s been a quiet few weeks because of the release of WordPress 5.9.
Global Styles variations switching
#35619 introduced a mechanism in Global Styles to switch between different preset styles for a theme. This allows themes to provide a wide variety of design options by simply creating different theme.json files. This is an alternative to child themes that opens up a lot of opportunities for creating variations of a theme very easily.
Allow pattern registration from the Pattern Directory with theme.json
#38323 is a proposal to allow themes to register patterns from the Pattern Directory.
Transparency added to color controls
Since #37731 merged it is now possible to set colors with transparency. This should make it possible to create more interesting layouts as blocks overlap and colors bleed into each other.
Typography support on the group block
In #37456 we added typography controls to the group block. This will make it easier to define different styles for different areas of your theme.
Design controls for interactive states
#38277 is a proposal to add design tools to help us manage interactive states in blocks, like :hover and :focus. This is a particularly challenging issue and could use input to get the ball rolling.
Improving the Site Editor export
The Site Editor already lets us export our edited templates. It would be great if this export also contained the other pieces needed to create a theme, which is what #38199 is proposing. Are there other things that we would need to make a complete theme? How could we incorporate a screenshot for example?
The style engine
Gutenberg has a wide range of block supports to customize the look of different styles: borders, colors, background, spacing, layout, duotone, typography. These things have been implemented organically, resulting in a system with different approaches depending on the styles we’re changing and their values. The style engine (#37978) is an attempt to unify these approaches in one package that will (in time) be able to support each of these customizations.
As always, please weigh in on these issues and pull requests — your feedback is crucial and appreciated.
Overview Issues
- Default Theme (Twenty Twenty Two): Overview of Gutenberg issues: #75
- GS: The Global Styles Interface #34574
- FSE: Post Comments Loop Block: Tracking issue #34994
- FSE: Site Editing block placeholders #35501
- FSE: Templates list screen overview #36597
- DT: Typography Tools: Tracking defaults for blocks #35604
- Tracking: ToolsPanel Follow Ups #36165
General Resources
- Full Site Editing Milestones
- GitHub Issues: Full Site Editing
- GitHub Issues: Themes
- Block-based Themes Reference
- Block-based Themes Tutorial
- Experimental-Themes.json
- Using the Block Editor for Theme Parts
- Printing navigation-block HTML from a legacy menu in themes
Thanks @jeffikus and @onemaggie for your help with this week’s summary. Please comment if there’s something you’d like to highlight 🙂
Abbreviation key:
DT: Design Tools
FSE: Full Site Editing
GS: Global Styles