Might as well weigh in
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Review update:Gutenberg was released as the default editor with WP5 when it should have been optional.
It was also released too early, with security bugs and at an inappropriate time of year.
It’s clear from these reviews that many users don’t know that they can install classic editor and feel as though they’re stuck with Gutenberg.
After using Gutenberg and giving it as good chance i installed classic editor on all of my clients websites as they found Gutenberg unintuitive, confusing and slow to work with.
The mystery meat navigation is a massive usability issue.
Accessibility is poor.
Columns in Gutenberg are the most useful aspect but they are still messy to work with.
In my opinion it would’ve been better to have kept the Classic Editor but have the option of adding Gutenberg blocks into the classic editor window. This would’ve been way less jarring for users whilst adding useful functionality.
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I haven’t tried to manipulate blocks in a theme yet so this review is purely about the editing experience. I’ve been using the Gutenberg plugin for a while and i’ve also built a demo site using it so i could see what all of the fuss and panic was about.
I make my WP themes from using the Foundation Framework and Advanced Custom Fields. These give me everything i need to built a website that can be adapted to a clients needs. My initial worry was that ACF would break in Gutenberg meaning i’d have a load of clients websites that i’d need to rebuild. Fortunately, that isn’t the case as ACF currently works well with Gutenberg. The only issue i’ve come up against recently is that custom meta boxes aren’t loaded when a template or page hierarchy is changed in the editor. That’s an ACF issue though and I’m sure that’ll be ironed out.
I have to give kudos to the development team as they’re building this out in the wild and letting anyone use it and getting some pretty stern criticism along the way. In my opinion I think that Gutenberg is the right way to go but at the moment its usability needs some tweaking.
Some observations about the Gutenberg editor:
The really, really minimal design:
It looks slick but it needs more definition (more borders) between blocks and also meta box sections. The mystery meat block controls need to be more obvious from the get go too.The hidden permalink editor
Could the permalink edit box be shown at all times?The post updated message bar
Could this maybe fade after a few seconds? It currently persists and covers the permalink editor. It also says ‘view post’ when you’re editing a page.Classic block inline images
Can we have this back please.Dragging a block
Maybe make the area to the left hand side of the block light grey when hovered over so it’s obvious it can be dragged.Adding a new block
When i add a new block i’d really like a border around it so i know it’s selected.
When adding a new block inline would it not be better to give the user an immediate choice of block rather than an empty block? (this is the default behavior for the new block icon to the top left of the editor)Cover image block
When this is aligned to the left or right of text it’s not clear which block is being selected. Also has some pretty weird behavior as it disappears and changes width when aligned to the left or right.Column blocks
Personally, this and shared blocks are THE main benefit of Gutenberg but again it’s unclear which column is being selected when using columns and it feels like i’m guessing half the time. Adding columns within columns gets quite messy.Custom meta boxes
when hovering over the downwards arrow to expand a custom meta box section the cursor is ‘all scroll’ which makes it feel like the section can only be dragged rather than expanded.Educating users
One unavoidable impact that Gutenberg will definitely have is the amount of time developers will spend educating clients how to use it. I can see Gutenberg at least doubling the training time required for each client.
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