This is a summary of a Hallway Hangout that was wrangled in the #fse-outreach-experiment channel as part of the FSE Outreach Program. It was intended to be a casual walkthrough of the current call for testing with @sparklingrobots taking the lead sharing their screen. Big thank you for being brave enough to meander around the call for testing publicly.
As a reminder, there is still 1 week left to participate so please join in if you can.
Attendance:
Thank you to everyone who attended 🙂 @karmatosed @mkaz @shaunandrews @paaljoachim @annezazu @sparklingrobots @richtabor
Video Recording:
Feedback Overview
Throughout the session, some specific issues were noted as problem areas to follow up on, including some previous reported and some new:
- It’s not clear when you are adding a theme block outside of the Query Loop vs within. In this case, it was confusing when the Post Comment Count block wasn’t properly displaying the number of comments and it wasn’t clear the issue was that it needed to be within the loop. There’s an open issue to discuss this general phenomenon.
- She had a desire to change the post excerpt length, which has an open enhancement issue.
- There was an issue with the post title overflowing outside the bounds of a Query Loop block pattern. Need to replicate and open an issue!
- There was a strange Inserter issue where you couldn’t find any theme blocks based on the current block you were selecting. Need to replicate and open an issue!
- The call for testing itself needed to have updated instructions as you need to install Gutenberg first before activating a block theme. This was updated live on the call.
Outside of specific points of feedback about the experience, there were also high level themes that became apparent as @sparklingrobots made her way:
- They were confused about where various settings were expected to be, sometimes seeking out the block toolbar and other times the block sidebar. For example, it was unclear at a glance how to change width of overall query and how to change the number of posts displayed.
- The placeholders for various theme blocks were underwhelming and often not informative enough to know quite how to customize.
- She was confused by how by selecting one Query Loop pattern, they instead ended up with two Query Loops! This is part of one of the default patterns included in the Query Loop block and could cause confusion long term when thinking about having more complex patterns.
- There was a desire for more dimension controls for various blocks including the Columns Block and Post Comments block. This is under active iteration!
We ended the call talking about how the future of the Query Loop block powering more user friendly variations, an integrated block pattern library, an overhaul of the IA of the various design tools, & more will help ease this current experience. For now though, we’re in an in between state where loads can still be learned to improve the default tools themselves.
Next Steps
@annezazu will follow up next week after she returns (she’s out Thurs/Fri) to replicate and open issues.