Browsing around on Facebook today, I noticed a video published by the official WordPress account which previews new features coming to the block editor in WordPress 5.8.
I’ve spent far too long away from the post/block editor in WordPress and so when watching the video, most of the features described made no sense to me. However, there were a few things that stood out such as Inline Image cropping without having to leave the editor. That alone is going to save media-heavy users a lot of time.
Transitions, block patterns, and duotone filters all seem cool but because of my limited use of WordPress lately and my lack of imagination, I have a hard time understanding how I’d use these features in content. I imagine things will become clearer once I come across a use case where they make sense.
Not everyone is convinced that the block editor is the way to go as one person commented on the video.
It still has an extremely poor rating. (2/5 with 2234 1 star reviews). For a lot of users who just want simple blogging capability the block editor is overly complicated and hard to use.
I don’t think it’s fair or accurate to use the review numbers for the Gutenberg plugin as a source of information to back up an argument on why it’s not a good block editor. Many of those reviews are from two years ago or longer and do not reflect the product that the editor is today.
Gutenberg and the block editor should be judged and reviewed based on its current iteration and honestly, it’s not as bad as some folks make it out to be. That is until you run into an issue with a block, HTML, embedding, or any nuance involved with the intricacies of content that is difficult to solve.
Let me know in the comments what you’re looking forward to in WordPress 5.8 with regards to the block editor. I’m also curious as to use cases where these features would be beneficial to you.
I’ve struggled to appreciate Gutenberg for a really long time. I’m coming around to the idea that the coolest features of Gutenberg *aren’t* for people who simply want to type paragraphs and drop in the occasional image, and in fact, sometimes it makes it harder for them.
But for people who want to create cool designs for pages, and make gorgeous brochure type layouts, it’s magnificent.
Patterns can be slick, especially if you can create your own with point and click, because you personally might find yourself using the same set of blocks to make the same sort of thing in almost every post. Save it as a pattern and then you save yourself some time every time you want to make that.
I have a similar mindset. I don’t mind all of the cool features and flexibility being built into the block editor. Perhaps one day I’ll need it. But for now, all I need to do is type a few paragraphs, add a few images, embed a few things and hit publish.