Great example of why developers are not UX experts

  • This is a review of the Gutenberg plugin at version 0.5.0.

    The Gutenberg plugin leaves a lot of room for improvement.

    By removing all the traditional editor buttons and trying to make a minimalist design the usefulness and ease of use has been drastically reduced. I found myself either not being able to do very basic content management or having to click, hover and look for the buttons – instead of them being visible and available immediately.

    I feel like it fails to recognise the vastly different ways WordPress is being used to manage the different types and formatting of content.

    For example, I manage a how-to blog. Listed items (UL or UL) and pictures are fundamental to providing how-to-instructions. But with Gutenberg even this very basic requirement is not possible – to add an image you need to end the list, insert the image then start a new list – returning the list back to 1.

    In content creation I often reformat text, for example changing listed items to headings or switching an H2 to an H3 to create a better structure. Gutenberg did not handle this well at all. Turning a list to headings created some hideous heading block with <br>’s (not that I can check due to the lack of a “Source” option).

    Whilst I can understand the desire to be innovative and provide improvements I can’t look past the a usability and functionality nightmare it is. The platform may be web/browser – but the end users are used to desktop word processors and will be expecting a similar user experience when trying to use HTML WYSIWYG editors. For example, select-all – this should select EVERYTHING in the document — not just the current content block.

    For the more HTML literate users – the lack of a “Source” option to view and manually change the HTML will be significant. If you’ve ever needed to paste content in HTML format into a post, add custom formatting, edit/clean HTML – you’ll be at a complete loss with Gutenberg.

    I find it hard to see the Gutenberg editor providing an easier experience for any content management scenario I’ve dealt with.

    If this was made core I would likely be forced to move to another CMS.

    Third-party plugins to re-introduce a usable content editor are not enough – the content editor needs to be a consistent user experience for ALL WordPress users and MUST have core support.

    • This topic was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by ovann86. Reason: add 1-star, somehow it managed to be removed when i submitted review
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  • If this was made core I would likely be forced to move to another CMS.

    Third-party plugins to re-introduce a usable content editor are not enough – the content editor needs to be a consistent user experience for ALL WordPress users and MUST have core support.

    Fully agree.

    Moderator Mel Choyce-Dwan

    (@melchoyce)

    For example, I manage a how-to blog. Listed items (UL or UL) and pictures are fundamental to providing how-to-instructions. But with Gutenberg even this very basic requirement is not possible – to add an image you need to end the list, insert the image then start a new list – returning the list back to 1.

    Thanks for this suggestion — started an issue for it here: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/2042

    In content creation I often reformat text, for example changing listed items to headings or switching an H2 to an H3 to create a better structure. Gutenberg did not handle this well at all. Turning a list to headings created some hideous heading block with <br>’s (not that I can check due to the lack of a “Source” option).

    Made a bug report: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/2044

    For example, select-all – this should select EVERYTHING in the document — not just the current content block.

    You should be able to do this now. If you’re focused inside of a block, selecting all selects everything inside that block. If you’re not focused inside of a block, you can select everything in the editor.

    For the more HTML literate users – the lack of a “Source” option to view and manually change the HTML will be significant. If you’ve ever needed to paste content in HTML format into a post, add custom formatting, edit/clean HTML – you’ll be at a complete loss with Gutenberg.

    You can switch to the “source” view by clicking Visual \/ —> Text in the upper-left corner of the screen ??

    Thanks for your feedback! If you find more bugs or have ideas, please add them here or create new issues on the GitHub repo.

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