One of the worse update of wordpress’ history

Why do we need to click a button to see the word counter? Most of writers need to reach a certain amount of words. It takes almost no place on the screen, there is no way I will click every minute on a button for this.

Because most people don’t need to “reach a certain amount of words”. They write the amount of words necessary to convey what they’re saying, and then stop. The counter is not needed for most people.

The block template is not properly working (at least in my case) when the block is a list. It always adds an empty list item at the end of the list on the published post, even if this item is not existing inside the editor.

When you get to the end of the list, hit enter twice and it will go to a new block without adding an extra blank item to the end of the list.

Why so much hassle to find the correct buttons? Where is the underline button? how do we even change the colors of the text? Yes it was better to have one fixed editor bar at the top, where we could easily find all the buttons at one place.

There is no underline button, because underlines are often confused with links. Similarly, there is no text color button, because this isn’t myspace and nobody should be changing text colors in the middle of their paragraphs.

What’s the point of creating a title and then clicking on H3, H4 and so on? This is confusing…

The point of using different header weights is to have different header weights. Normal text falls into categories, such as headers, sub-headers, and similar. On the web, these things matter not just for the look and size of the text, but for its meaning as well. A header of H2 is more important than a header of H3, and these are used as such by search engines. It’s called Semantic Markup and you should look into it.

Why, when adding a link, the original post/page’s title is not automatically added as the text of the link?? Regression or bug?

I think you’re probably adding links incorrectly. Try copying the URL from the browser and pasting it directly over whatever text in the paragraph that you want to make into the link. That’s the easiest and most common approach. The link dialog box was pared down quite a bit because, to be honest, it was a bit over-complicated when most people just copy and paste links around.

I don’t even see the point of a block editor… We are editing TEXTS, we are not creating a web page with many graphical elements. I never had to reorder any blocks or take advantage of this structure. Selecting texts between different blocks is not smooth and buggy.

All this structure existed before too, though. You just didn’t see it. That big-old-block-of-text that you were editing before had to be converted into these blocks in order to be put onto a webpage. The new editor shows you more of that. It gives you control over the blocks that were there before, instead of trying to guess and create them for you. The web is made out of these blocks, and always has been. This isn’t new, this is actually old.

The editor could be useful when editing from small screens where there is not much space, but the experience is worse on big screen, we have to scroll much more the page because of the padding around the blocks and the final result is slightly different to what it looks like in the editor…

That is fair, and ideally that would be handled by your theme. Theme’s have the ability to style the editor to match what the text looks like on the “front” end of your site. All the default “Twenty” themes have been updated to do this, and your theme should receive an update to handle it as well. Or, alternatively, switch to a better theme.

PS: I’m aware some of the problems might be related to my install (but it wasn’t the case with the classic editor).

The classic editor was hiding things from you. It’s an editor based on a word processor style. It’s what was familiar, and made you think that it was like a printed page. The web is not a printed page. Never was. Blocks are fundamental in HTML and to the web, and now you’re seeing behind the curtain a bit. Best get used to it.

PS2: I’m totally willing to edit my feedback if the suggested corrections can be made. But for now, please bring the old editor back…

The old editor is never coming back. This is the way forward. Sorry if that upsets you.

I’m not going to take again your affirmations point by point.
You wrote your opinion about what and how it should be, and that’s alright.

But, please take into consideration that I’m not the only one “upset” by this, there are plenty of complaints.

The way you judge my theme as a “bad” one or mean that I don’t know how the web works shows that you seem to underestimate people’s feedback, and that’s problematic.

Telling that the underline button is not needed and that nobody needs to add colors is almost shocking. How can you even decide how people should write on their websites? Some important words need to be put in red (and even underlined). Same for the word counters, isn’t Yoast SEO (one of) the top downloaded plugin? It looks like most of the WP users care about the number of words!

To be honest, I think you may have misunderstood some of my points (or I didn’t explain clearly, sorry if that is the case…). For example, about the links… I might be abnormal to you but I don’t usually paste links, I link to my own content by searching a post title through the WordPress field… That way I don’t need to open a new tab or search in the browser’s bar the link I want. And I should mention that sometimes I don’t remember all the posts I wrote for years, so I love the ability to search a keyword and get the post link to it.

Blocks or fundamental, I agree, but usability too.

@atx

Why so much hassle to find the correct buttons? Where is the underline button? how do we even change the colors of the text? Yes it was better to have one fixed editor bar at the top, where we could easily find all the buttons at one place.

You can still underline by selecting and pressing Ctrl + U. To color individual words or sentences you can do it by CSS or installing a plugin.

What’s the point of creating a title and then clicking on H3, H4 and so on? This is confusing…

You can use Markdown to speed up your heading creation, write ## for H2, ## for H3 and so on until H6. So, to create an H2 write “## This is a level 2 heading” (without quotes), press enter and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

The editor could be useful when editing from small screens where there is not much space, but the experience is worse on big screen, we have to scroll much more the page because of the padding around the blocks and the final result is slightly different to what it looks like in the editor…

Otto is right on this one, that’s your theme.

Hi Orlando, and thank you for the tips!
That’s indeed useful and I will definitely use them if I switch back to Gutenberg.

But it’s still not OK to me to install a plugin to put a word or two in red… CSS is not a better option and is hard to maintain.

Wouldn’t it be 10 times easier and better to just add a single button for that?
Anyway, I’m not a WP dev, I’m just giving my opinion as a (full time) WP writer, we can definitely find alternatives and different ways to do the same thing, but the classic editor had them all. The advantages of Gutenberg aren’t big enough to me.

@atx

But it’s still not OK to me to install a plugin to put a word or two in red… CSS is not a better option and is hard to maintain.

Well, that’s not the only thing that plugin does (I’m thinking of TinyMCE Advanced) so maybe you should try it.

As for using color in words, I’m going to be honest with you: in my 12 years using WordPress I have never colored individual words. If anything, I’ve colored entire paragraphs, and always in red. And I did that just a few times. I understand that someone might need that feature, and I believe that for those cases, plugins come to the rescue.

For reference, if you use the Classic Block in the block editor, then it still has the color selector that you can use for that. No plugins needed.

That said, removal of this option from the other blocks is intentional, and colorizing things in the middle of text isn’t generally a very good idea, as it can lead to accessibility issues.

Alright, I understand your points.
To be honest, I’m not coloring words in every blog post. I color a word each 100 posts. But still, the day I would need it, I would prefer to have a quick access to the color button. I guess the classic block might fit for that purpose…

But one of the most problematic points right now is about the links. I did love the way I could search a post link with a keyword, without having to manually search and copy a link. Do we also need the classic block for that? And by the way, will the classic block be deprecated in the future?

Thank you.

Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

See Samuel Wood (Otto) (@otto42) www.remarpro.com Admin’s page-long insult to the OP:

“…this isn’t myspace and nobody should be changing text colors in the middle of their paragraphs.
…It’s called Semantic Markup and you should look into it.
…I think you’re probably adding links incorrectly.
…switch to a better theme.
…Best get used to it.
…The old editor is never coming back. This is the way forward. Sorry if that upsets you.”

WordPress: This is the problem. You force a product on people, then become defensive and insult someone who tells you he doesn’t like it, even though he and many others, including me, express appreciation for the time and effort you put into it. We recognize your hard work, and two thousand people actually cared enough to tell you the result is bad.

Many people don’t bother complaining–they have downloaded the primary add-on to bring back the “old editor” more than four million times. Let that sink in: MORE THAN FOUR MILLION TIMES.

Nobody likes being told they’re wrong. That doesn’t matter. You’ve been told more than four million times that forcing Gutenberg is a bad idea. All you have to do swallow your pride and listen.

@imanamateur Huh. Well, a bit over the top there, don’t you think? I was answering his questions, not insulting him.

Speaking of answering questions:

@atx

But one of the most problematic points right now is about the links. I did love the way I could search a post link with a keyword, without having to manually search and copy a link.

I guess I didn’t understand your original question, but you can still do exactly what you’re talking about. No need for the classic block.

1. Make a normal paragraph block. Type something in it like “This is a link.”
2. Highlight the word “link” or whatever else you want to turn into your link.
3. Click the link button.
4. A popup will appear. Now, you can type a URL in here, but you can also search all your posts. Just start typing the name of a post you have made to get a list. Select from the list, and hit enter when you find it. Voila, internal link created.

Does that answer your issue?

@imanamateur

Many people don’t bother complaining–they have downloaded the primary add-on to bring back the “old editor” more than four million times. Let that sink in: MORE THAN FOUR MILLION TIMES.

Nah, you are generalizing things a bit too far; let me give you an example, one that I have repeated over and over again to all of you that like to pop that 4M figure: I love Gutenberg and I also have the Classic Editor plugin installed; why would I do that? well, I have very long old posts that I don’t want to convert to Gutenberg (yeah I’m lazy). For everything new, I use Gutenberg exclusively.

So there goes your theory that every install of Classic Editor counts as one in the “I don’t like Gutenberg” tally.