This is going to make things much harder…

  • I have heard whisperings of the Gutenberg editor for a while but hadn’t actually seen it or researched it so was disconcerted to see the sheer number of 1 star reviews ion here and I read quite a lot of them last night.

    I thought rather than rely solely on what others think, I would install this plugin myself on a test site and try it out.

    Mu opinions have already been covered already by others but all in all, this is going to make it very difficult for the ‘average’ user to work out. Other than clicking the text area to change the text, it isn’t really self-explanatory. A few of the things I don’t like are:

    – Why is the textarea ‘block’ a set width? It sits within the middle of the screen with white space on both sides but there appears to be no reason for this whatsoever as it doesn’t seem to have any benefit.

    – If I want to write a block of text, add a list, add a heading etc. why cant I do that in one text area (like the current WYSIWYG editor?) What is the purpose of creating a different ‘block’ for everything, even a heading?

    – Why do I have to click the 3 dots to the right to see the options (like to view the source)? Surely it is more logical to retain the tabs we have currently we I can very happily flick between visual and text if I so wish.

    – A couple of the options in the right hand menu (revealed by clicking the 3 dots) are ‘convert to blocks’ and ‘convert to shared block’. What does this even mean? I have no idea what this means other than clicking ‘convert to blocks’ seems to put half my content into a new block but in what situation would I need or want to do this?

    Finally, if there is a ‘classic view’ for the editor or in fact any other view other than this, I can’t find it. It is definitely well hidden!

    I think you need to step back and look at who actually uses this editor. It isn’t developers, it is customers. Customers generally have no idea about how website editors work. All they know is if it looks like Microsoft Word, they are happy as they can edit their own page content. As many others said, when some of my clients see this they will not have the first clue as to how to use it. You could put a guide in or a wizard but that won’t help, it generally is not logical to use.

    I’m not sure what type of people this is aimed at, it’s like a web builder but a very basic one that doesn’t really have any logic to it. If you’re targeting the Wix, Weebly users market then I’m not sure how this will attract them. Your comments keep saying it isn’t a page builder but then what exactly is it? If it is just an editor, why cant it just be left as an editor and you can just give it a facelift?

    The other thing is Wix users will never use WordPress, it is too complicated for them as it is. Turning the editor into a ‘kind of’ builder won’t make any difference – they’ll continue to use Wix.

    So all in all, I think actually it’s a bit of an odd idea and not sure where the logic for it comes from, who it’s aimed at or how you think it will benefit anyone.

    I would imagine setting this as the default editor is just a very, very bad idea. A genuine question to the plugin authors though is what is the thought process of making it mandatory? Why can it not be included as an additional interface that can be turned on if the user wishes?

    • This topic was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by johnfrl_15. Reason: Wrong star rating given
Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Author Tammie Lister

    (@karmatosed)

    Thanks for taking time to explore Gutenberg and leave a review. I’ll try and reply to some points now.

    > Why is the textarea ‘block’ a set width?

    We have to consider all screen sizes and also readability length. Reading long lines of text is an issue and it’s a fine balance there.

    > If I want to write a block of text, add a list, add a heading etc. why cant I do that in one text area (like the current WYSIWYG editor?)

    Blocks bring a lot of benefits from styling through to being able to combine. Combining or nesting is one way you can get to have the combinations into blocks.

    > Why do I have to click the 3 dots to the right to see the options (like to view the source)? Surely it is more logical to retain the tabs we have currently we I can very happily flick between visual and text if I so wish.

    Ellipsis is a common design pattern so that does make sense and has proven so in testing. As far as the tabs, actually far less people use visual editing than we often think. I was also surprised by this observing people. It’s quite an advanced thing to do and if we make it exposed people can click and often get into issues there. Adding that extra discoverability step prevents those ‘just clicking’ and causing issues with their content.

    > A couple of the options in the right hand menu (revealed by clicking the 3 dots) are ‘convert to blocks’ and ‘convert to shared block’.

    Converting to blocks changes one type to another. This is actually something requested by people using Gutenberg.

    > Finally, if there is a ‘classic view’ for the editor or in fact any other view other than this, I can’t find it. It is definitely well hidden!

    There is both a classic editor block and the option in the toolbar ellipsis. You can also install the classic editor plugin and remove Gutenberg as an experience completely, even when in core.

    Thread Starter johnfrl_15

    (@johnfrl_15)

    Tammie, thanks for your responses. They all make sense but all I can say is my clients will all find this difficult and confusing to use. I certainly will (as I rarely use the editor for anything)

    All I would like to know though is why has the decision been made to make this core and not optional? It doesn’t seem to make any sense. What was the reasoning behind it? Why not add it as an optional setting?

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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