This is a summary of a Hallway Hangout that was wrangled in the #fse-outreach-experiment channel as part of the FSE Outreach Program. Thank you to everyone who joined in!
Attendance:
@ndiego @karmatosed @shaunandrews @beckej @fabiankaegy @dhansondesigns @codemanas Colin Duwe
Video Recording:
Topics
Style variations
- Started off checking in on the new Global styles ongoing roadmap overview issue.
- Ed discussed how he wishes there were options to pick and choose only certain parts of style variations rather than whole variation.
- In order for that to be an option, there needs to be a combination of improvements/changes including more granularity with saving, the ability to partially switch styles, and exposing more style options. This is somewhat touched on here.
- Overall, the resounding question was “How can we make it less overwhelming for users?” especially if they might want to take advantage of aspects of the style variations without switching entirely.
- Right now, there are two extremes without much ease for middle ground options: all the options to customize in Styles vs wholesale full switching between styles (with variations).
- What could we offer for theme developers? If we can extend this for themers, they can manage more granular options for their users rather than Core.
How can we curate the experience?
- Colin brought up a very important topic around curating the experience for folks, especially clients. He asked whether there was an issue that summarized the various approaches being taken (there is not and I followed up after around perhaps creating a Discussion issue).
- This led to a conversation around various curation options through theme.json, template locking, and block locking, including being able to control who can do block locking with filters.
- The question of “How can you build a theme and lock things down/curate for clients?” at the same time came up.
- For example, clients need to be able to edit the navigation menu and header but don’t touch the logo on the left! You could lock various items down to ensure things aren’t deleted.
- In general, there was agreement that the power lies between theme.json and locking options.
- During this conversation, a few folks from the agency world mentioned how theme.json is only useful if it works in tooling for existing agencies and design systems. For example, people are struggling a bit switching to theme.json from CSS.
- While, in time, folks should be able to rely on the site editor to build a theme, it’s a big workflow change regardless and not everyone is going to build from there. This is where the power of import/export functionality will be key.
- Trying to push towards doing these things in theme.json but the amount of uncertainty around even just simply adding a theme.json feels nerve wracking.
Explore options for standardizing and extending theme.json design tokens for spacing
- We touched on the desire to standardize spacing options and have the same t-shirt sizing/spacing scale that is being done with typography controls. This will help guide the user while also give them flexibility to choose from some presets.
- By having standardization, it’ll be easier to have content portability/theme switching/etc.
- This conversation led to a discussion around how inconsistent the dimension controls are across blocks. It’s hard to know why one option is available in X block but not Y. There’s a sense they should all be available.
Split block tools between “settings” and “appearance”
- The initial reaction from two folks was “Ahhh two sets of tabs!” when first seeing some of the designs.
- When thinking about the various tools, this brought up the question of “What’s a primary or secondary tool for each block?”. It seems wise for an audit of some sort to occur.
- These pain points relate to both blocks not all having the same controls + understanding what’s in block toolbar vs sidebar.
- For folks in the agency world, there’s also an element of how different people need to look at each set of tooling (visual vs content focus) depending on what they are doing (are they a designer or a copy person?).
- Keynote was shared as an example of an application that manages this experience quite well.
- We went through the Query loop block as an example of current pain points.
Rows/stacks/group: variations or new blocks?!
- Right now, the transformation is in sidebar rather than transform menu. There’s an issue open to add the variations to the transform menu.
- We briefly talked about when does it make sense to have as a standalone block with different controls being exposed rather than variations that comes with inherent limitations?
- We ended by briefly touching on a new label for items that block adoption for these features.
- If folks have any they want with that label, please do just let me know and I can add it in!