Not happy with Gutenberg :-(
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Test with Gutenberg 2.1.0
About me:
I’m using wordpress for real homepagework (not design development, but day to day content work!)
And I’m teaching wordpress for beginners for years
And … I’m not happy with Gutenberg.Summary:
1.) Don’t repair something which is not broken! In my Gutenberg test I could not find anything which I could not do with classic editor. And in most cases, classic editor can do it much better. So you replace a working system with thousands of well integrated, working plugins with a totally new system with less features, poor user interface, more complicated to use and problems for a lot of existing plugins!
2.) It’s much harder to start for beginners. Until now I only have to say: “Open a new page and start editing like you know it from MS-Word or Google Docs.”
With Gutenberg you have to select a block first and – if you want/need really formatting – you have to know that you have to use the classic block (all others are nearly useless for such a task).
3.) Changes in existing content are much more troublesome. If you have written a lot of text in a normal paragraph block and discovering the need of extended formatting afterwards, … you have a really problem! => A change to classic block is not possible! And the need for changing block types if you need serious formatting is painful. (In classic editor you can everytime format everything in every manner you like!)
4.) The whole block concept adds an additional level of complexity and only makes sense if used in a page builder. (And page builders have a lot of downloads!) But Gutenberg looks only like a extremely crippled try of a page builder and does not justify the added complexity at all.
So I gave only 1 Star for Gutenberg (at least in present version)Details of my testing + results:
Testsystem:
WP 4.9.2
Theme: Twenty sixteenwhat worked:
+) before created test page with headings, paragraphs, image, gallery, list, shortcode and a table of contents (plugin: easy table of contents) was converted into a classic block without visible differences in the resulting webpage
+) adding new Gutenberg blocks below works and Gutenberg headings are shown in table of contents
+) publishing worksProblems (which maybe could be fixed):
a) Inserting Link in classic block sometimes doesn’t work at all, but the options (open link in new tab) never work!
b) Editor window is much too small! Classic Editor uses whole screen with – like shown in resulting Webpage. Gutenberg leaves 1/3 of the screenwith unused blank. That makes editing and formatting longer Text a pain, compared with classic editor – and it is no WYSIWYG as webpages uses the screen with like classic editor! (very bad ui design!)
c) All link-inserting (text, image, button) in Gutenberg blocks doesn’t have important options like “open link in new tab”
d) All text related Gutenberg blocks (paragraph, list, heading, …) need all formating options – and have only a few. (TinyMCE Advanced hast millions of downloads because people want and need extended inline formatting everywhere!) In my workshops the most asked question is always: “How can I format this …”
e) Converting blocks is very limited (Every time I need real formatting, I have to use a classic block, but other blocks can not be converted into a classic block! Even a cover image can not be converted into a normal image!) => a real conversion all to all is needed!
f) When editing a longer classic block (more than screen high) and scrolling down, the editing toolbar is unusable behind the “post updated message” (must close it manually before editing again => bad ui design!)
g) Custom fields from plugins at the bottom of the page doesn’t work for all plugins like in classic editor, for example “WP Asset CleanUp” works, but “Easy Table of Contents” does not.
h) The “Help” and the “Screen options” buttons at the top of the screen are gone with no replacement
i) In classic block all buttons like “insert media” and “insert shortcode” (plugin: Shortcodes Ultimate”) above toolbar are missing
j) Changing editor is unstable => have changed my to Gutenberg converted test page with plugin “classic editor” back to classic editor and edited some small things (Link target for Gutenberg image an button, deleted a line) and tried to open it afterwards in Gutenberg again: error (and “Attempt recovery” does not work/help). Have checked and revoked made changes in html-view but Gutenberg can not start again on this page. A conversion Gutenberg – Classic – Gutenberg without any editing works, but when reopening in Gutenberg, Gutenberg wants to convert all in Gutenberg defined classic blocks to classic blocks again. (also not very trustworthy)
k) After changing back to classic editor, a gallery created in Gutenberg is shown as gallery on webpage, but can not be edited as gallery in classic editor
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