[Updated] Good start. Looking forward to the future of WordPress editing

Update 8/13/2020: Well, it’s been about two years since leaving my original 4-star review. I was feeling hopeful and expected it to be vastly superior by now, but it has actually gotten worse. WP 5.5 made it more clunky and unwieldy to use, and as a theme developer, I am livid at the state of the code. The developers are constantly changing CSS classes and HTML structure so that I routinely have to investigate this mess to get something like image alignment working properly again (after working just fine for 6 years).

I’m even more depressed by the insane journey WP is taking to replicate the front-end in the back-end. First, Gutenberg tries to replicate the front-end in the back-end despite forcing styles that are hard to override and have different markup than the front-end, next up we have global styles put in the post editor view (huh?), and soon we’re going to have full site editing ALSO placed in the post editor view. Have any of the WP developers heard of the Customizer? What on earth is going on over at Automattic?

Please stop this madness and make a front-end editor like every other web platform. It’s much more intuitive, users understand how it works right away, and the infrastructure already exists in the Live Customizer. The back-end is NOT the front-end and trying to replicate it there is a doomed journey.

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I find the Gutenberg editor mostly intuitive to use already with a few exciting developments. I see the devs are checking out the reviews here, so I hope this is a good place to share my thoughts.

Here are all my notes from the editing experience:

• I should be able to cmd+enter to create a newline within the same paragraph
• If I switch to the Text view and add some HTML, I get this notice about externally modified content when I switch back to Visual. I’m guessing this will be fixed or it will be a huge issue for me.
• I like the delete option for entire paragraphs.
• The up/down arrows for reordering blocks are ok, but I’d rather have a drag-and-drop option (maybe use this icon). The arrows are a bit tedious to click.
• I really like the new extra-wide image size options
• As a theme developer, PLEASE add ample CSS classes for me to style the content blocks with. I need to easily be able to distinguish between the various image sizes and block quotes VS pull quotes. That goes for the front-end and the back-end.
• The new sidebar is much more organized and easier to use than the existing “side” widgets
• Very few users are aware of the “Screen Options” tab and how to show/hide meta boxes with it. I see some meta boxes are currently missing in the Gutenberg editor. I’d love to see a new version of Screen Options that is easier to find. Or, perhaps a redesign that will make it obsolete.
• Sticky status is also very hard to find in the current editor. I like that it is obvious now.
• The gray background behind the “Settings” button doesn’t read like a status to me. There should be a better indicator of it being active. It could be green (if you can get a high enough contrast ratio) or maybe remove it like this and switch the “X” to an arrow like the one currently used to show/hide the Customizer.
• When I press Enter to start a new paragraph, I expected this part of the toolbar to let me added images and other blocks too. It took me a moment to realize I have to scroll to the bottom to add an image. I think all blocks should be available there at all times. Actually, I just realized while writing this I can also use the insert button in the editor header so I don’t have to scroll down. That wasn’t obvious to me.

• This topic was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by Ben Sibley.