Much needed, still some fine-tuning to do

The plugin – as it is now – mostly runs smoothly and really improves working with posts, although it needs some time to get used to it (e.g. had to figure out how to wrap text around a left-/right-floating image). Good step-by-step tutorials (screencasts) would be helpful for operations that users have identified as difficult to figure out.

I recommend to add a button on the post edit screen in the upcoming versions to switch back to classic just to avoid a flood of enraged support requests in the forums. Many users simply need a long time to get used to an innovation, or they reject it simply because they reject everything that is new, and Gutenberg will certainly also evolve as we learn from cases where users (particularly non-techy users who are not testing now) are having problems.

A big relief is that shortcodes and metaboxes continue to function for some time – hopefully some years. Backwards-compatibility is really important in the huge and diverse WordPress ecosystem.

Configuring a block is a lot easier for average users than typing parameters into a shortcode.

Possibly a glitch: Currently the preview seems to require that I first save the post as draft, otherwise it’s empty.

I have deep respect for the people who take the risk to innovate and work hard for the community despite many ugly comments on their efforts. It’s probably similar to what Johannes Gutenberg had had to face that time from people who refused to give up the quill. 😀