Far far far too blocky…
-
I’ve played around with Gutenberg, and although it is a new way to use WordPress, it breaks writing and blogging. Even if you’re building a page, its going to make things awkward and very time consuming in its current state.
For example, if I need to create a simple paragraph with text, a heading and a bulleted list this is super easy in the current editor using TINYMCE. I can write, highlight the elements to change (headings, lists etc.) and I’m done. Gutenberg ‘blockifies’ every single writing element, making me to have to click to find every single block to format an element, whereas the classic editor has everything right in front of me. If I want to change the colour of a single word in the classic editor, this is simple to do. In Gutenberg, you can’t do this without writing HTML. Five to ten minute blogging jobs are now going to be two hour nightmares using Gutenberg, clicking to create every element. Its terrible.
Even other page builders don’t ‘blockify’ every single writing element and format, this is a very poor UX decision and should be canned, I really don’t see the need.
If you want to fix this, these are my suggestions:
1. Unblockify this. Get rid of the complexity. Have one block for text and all its formatting (Headings, paragraphs, lists etc. basically the current TINYMCE editor), one block for images, one block for video, one block for columns etc. As it is now, its a nightmare!!!!!!!
2. Please do not make this core. Please. Make this optional, like Hello Dolly and Aksimet.
3. If you feel you really really must make it core then at least do the following: In the Edit Page / Post have Three tabs; one with Gutenberg where people can block to their hearts content, one with Visual (the current classic editor) and one with Text. Give us the choice.
-
I agree, the blockiness can be disconcerting and even though having elements in blocks is generally a page builder approach, Gutenberg tends to take it to an extreme level. I use a page builder and initially the discovery of controls can be confusing and I can see why people find that bothersome.
The option of integrating Gutenberg as the third tab is an interesting but there is probably a rational why this hasn’t been done. The developers have gone for a complete override of the backend editor. It is probably an attempt to give lots of white space and distraction-less writing environment and to facilitate the AJAX reload/update experience. That being said there is merit in three tab solution to introduce a smother transition to Gutenberg. If you look at how many page builders on the back end are implemented, they generally only ever override the TinyMCE content area, leaving the rest of the backend interface intact, metaboxes and all. It is the least disruptive approach.
The implementation of Gutenberg misses a couple of opportunities.
On one side something overlooked for way to long in the TinyMCE environment, namely better treatment on the text as a work area for developers and HTML warriors. It badly needs some IDE qualities and features like what you would see in Codepen; proper respect for coed indentation, full screen(browser window), code hinting, colour coded syntax and dark mode. The recent addition of code mirror suggests that this should be possible.
On the other hand blocks suggests structure and I see a layout mechanism for sections/rows/columns and flex and grid all being possible. This mechanism could provide a basic foundation with an API for page builders add their own interfaces and features. And, this foundation would afford a less painful experience in switching between themes and builders, or for the less enthusiastic to turn off the structure all together and preserve content without the detritus of shortcodes.
Going back to the third tab paradigm, if there was a way to use each tab and on the fly afford it a bigger canvas when needed, it could be workable.
The topic ‘Far far far too blocky…’ is closed to new replies.
