Confused about editors

WordPress 5.0 introduced the new block based editor, previously called Gutenberg. If you make a new post, you will get the new block editor. It doesn’t look like the old editor, and there is no Visual or Code tabs.

If you edit an older post, made with the older editor, then what you get will be the new block editor, with a single “Classic Block” in it. This classic block looks similar to the old editor, but it’s really just a single block in the new editor.

Try making new posts and pages instead of old ones. Then it will make more sense to you. Make your posts using normal blocks (not classic blocks) and then explore the menus for each of the blocks a bit. That should help you make more sense of it.

Or, maybe, watch some videos about the new editor:

https://www.google.com/search?q=gutenberg+editor&tbm=vid

Otto,
Thanks. That really helps. My sites are behaving as per the videos. So I guess they are working properly. I have been meaning to delve more deeply into the Block thing.

Maybe you can help with another aspect of this.

If I hit enter to start a new block, there are some icons that show up on the right. These icons seems to vary over time on any particular site and are different between different sites. Sometime I see an Add image icon there, sometimes there is a Shortcode icon, etc.

I got on to all this because I was installing plugins. Some of them mentioned adding an icon to the Visual Editor. So that is what got me started trying to figure out what the Visual Editor was. In one case, i didn’t see the icon for the plugin, so couldn’t use it.

But back to the three icons on the Right side of a new block. When I first installed “The Event Calendar Shortcode and Block”, their little icon was appearing on the Right. Now I don’t see it, but it is available in the block choices.

So what is controlling the three block-types icons that you see at initially see on the right? Recently used or something?

When you hit enter to start a new block, it will be a paragraph block by default.

The three on the right are some common ones that you might want to use. They are your first three most commonly used. These are therefore just quick selectors for those. If you want to add a different block, then you can click the + button on the left hand side.

There’s like 90-ish blocks available for different uses. The image block for images, the heading block for H1-H6’s, a list block for lists, and so on. You can select them in the new popup that appears when you click the + button.

The first nine it shows you in the popup box are the blocks that you use most often, so that list will get more refined to what you do with it over time. You can scroll to find a block, or type in the name of what you’re looking for to narrow the list.

You can also use the quick selection mode to find blocks. When you start a new block, type / (slash). This will bring up a list of blocks. Type in a block name to narrow the list. When you have it narrowed enough, hit enter to convert the block into that type of block. So if you want to insert an image, you hit enter to start a new block, type /image to find the image block, then hit enter again and you have the image block. All blocks can be found by name this way.

OK thanks. I did some playing and those three that show up on the right at first seems to be or become the the ones that you most recently used. Not sure where they come from at first but if I use a block-type, it then shows up as one of the three.