irishetcher

I agree with the points you make but we need to clarify one thing. The classic plugin doesn’t reinstate the current editor. What it does is turn off the REACT override that is Gutenberg. In fact if you were to create a custom post type with its own custom fields and disable the TinyMCE text area that represents the main content Gutenberg would not be activated at all.

This seems to be the way things are going to work but who knows, at some point the implementation of the current editor could be deprecated.

One of the goals of Gutenberg is to remove what they are calling the mystery meat. One such piece of mystery meat are the shortcodes something that a novice may not understand. But if you look at the many functions of these shortcodes one is to interpolate custom values from custom fields into your content. Not just into your layout but in the middle of a paragraph for example. It seems if you look at it from this point of view, Gutenberg is handing us, the current users, some mystery meat like, how do we now do the things that are possible with the current way WordPress works.

Don’t get me wrong. I see a lot of merit in what has been done with Gutenberg but it is the wrong tool for the jobs we are already doing. It all seems a bit convoluted and given the point I made about it being a REACT override, much like how Divi and other builders override the main content area, it begs the question why you wouldn’t just allow users to switch on or off Gutenberg without having to resort to a plugin.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by irishetcher.

Some very obvious points about the lack of coders tools that generally get overlooked in WordPress. Yes there is code mirror but it is only available for files in the theme etc., not in the actual editor where work get done. Adding an improved code mirror to the text tab in the current editor (with, code completion, formatting wiht proper indentations, and dark mode) would have gone a long way to improving TinyMCE.

Yes we need aspects of Gutenberg but some very obvious things that blocks should do are being overlooked; a structured box model (sections/rows/columns) that page builders could hook into.

I agree with you on that last point in that most people new to this kind of stuff are going to find it a challenge, wether it is Gutenberg or TinyMCE. I can foresee a lot of potential for Gutenberg and at some stage it may very well cover all bases in terms of use case and workflows. At the moment it doesn’t and realistically it would be too early to expect it to fulfil all requirements.

I actually would like Gutenberg and the block system to become some sort of page / visual builder. It kind of needs to become that to close the gap of rendering content exactly how you expect it to. Builders like Divi already do this and it makes sense to do it this way.

Hi Marius,

I think this is where a lot of people coming to look at Gutenberg for the first time are getting confused. They are not seeing a clear roadmap of where we will be going with it and in some sense I am also a little confused but am guessing at what great things it could mean fro WordPress in five years time.

Understandably development takes time and it all can’t happen at once. With this is mind I see Gutenberg as two things, the editor for, as you say, editing experience and editing flow and then the blocks for structure. I agree, out of the box Gutenberg is a really great way to work if you are publishing blog posts and this is a good thing. For other use cases, such as data entry on custom post types with custom fields, we have a way to go till these are perfected.

We do now have the option to move around the meta boxes that represent these elements and, currently you can add some styling to hide the core Gutenberg blocks and adjust the metaboxes to your liking, even without using the Classic Editor plugin. I am not saying this is the best solution because I expect that all these things will be resolved, either by what happens with Gutenberg itself or with alternatives implemented by third parties. As I said things will happen over the next number of years.

On the blocks and the structural capabilities. Currently, in terms of layout, they are quite rudimentary in how they relate to what is rendered on the front end. I would like to see then extended to cater for a section/row/column/block(module) box model structure with an api that page builders could hook into. This would make switching themes and page builders more seamless and less painful. I am a Divi user myself and I agree that it is time to move away from the shortcodes it uses to render the page structure. But until we gat something resembling what I suggested above there would be no point Elegant Themes jumping in now with a Gutenberg solution.

One final note. I would like if Gutenberg was in some way a page builder, albeit a rudimentary one with some front end visual builder capabilities. It would to some degree act as an entry to web design and WordPress and help new users understand how to go about working with layouts. Once they get comfortable with that they can move on to the advanced builders and themes.

What you are suggesting is ideally what I am hopping Gutenberg will be, when fully cooked. I see a lot of reaction that doesn’t actually dig in and analyse where the pain points might be. And painful it maybe but in the long run well worth it.

Some of the use cases where I had some concerns in terms of the UI I have already got solutions for with simple CSS hacks and these I may not even have to use as either they will be addressed by Gutenberg itself or the vendors of the plugin I use.

On the page builder front, I use Divi, and while it really does a great job and I can’t knock it, the fact that it runs on its own proprietary short codes for structure means that changing themes can be an issue, exactly as you outlined. In a way this is a legacy problem generated by WordPress itself, in that where it became stale, page builder vendors stood into the breach with a better solution for end users.

Where I see this being resolved, again just like you suggested, is if WordPress provides for the basic box model structure (section, rows, columns, modules/blocks) and then provide an extensive api for the page builders to hook into.

We will have to wait how things pan out. I spent the last number of hours testing the latest release of Gutenberg and with some new block plugins. Some I really like, even without the full functionality that I get the current conventional ones. Another one though just didn’t work at all, probably because it needs an update.

Ideally, due to this environment of mismatches and lack of compatibility, it might be better for Gutenberg to be in core, not on by default, but to be triggered into action by themes that are compatible with it. Ultimately I do see the logic though of putting a gun to peoples heads to get them moving on it, so at some stage we would need to be warned that the old classic editor was going.