The Gutenberg Editor is here with its new version, Gutenberg 1.2. The newest version was released over the weekend with some interesting enhancements.
This time, the changelog had around 30 improvements along with some addition of features like added postmeta support, extended settings placeholder, and more. Now, let’s have a quick look at the improvements in Gutenberg 1.2.
This release offered initial support for postmeta in block attributes. Gutenberg contributor, Gary Pendergast has tweeted an example plugin for those who want to experiment with it.
Just between us, the new Gutenberg 1.2 release includes the first version of postmeta support! If you want to start experimenting with it, here's a sample plugin to get you going. 🙂https://t.co/O1GbKZ3xzt
— Gary (@GaryPendergast) September 29, 2017
The updated version of Gutenberg has provided a better experience resolving block conflicts when switching between the “classic editor” and Gutenberg. In the previous versions, if a user had created some paragraph blocks in Gutenberg but switched to the classic editor, the tags would get stripped out, making the blocks invalid when moving back to Gutenberg. Gutenberg 1.2 merges a pull request that detects whether the post contains blocks and then disables the wpautop behavior in the classic editor to prevent it from stripping the tags.
The new version is also ready to support metaboxes and has added a placeholder for the proposed Extended Settings panel. The metabox placeholder shell currently sits beneath the content with a “coming soon” message.
Another new feature in Gutenberg 1.2 is the addition of word and block count to the table of contents. The value of knowing how many blocks are in play on the page or how many headings have been used is not immediately evident. Gutenberg users claim it to strike as a rather large and obstructive display of non-essential information, which for some reason has been given priority placement at the top of the editor.
Version 1.2 has also made few other improvements as well. Some of them are listed below:
- Add crash recovery for blocks which error while saving
- Accessibility: add landmark regions
- Allow toolbar wrapper to be clicked through
- Shift focus into popover when opened
- Improve search message to add context
- Improve dropzone contrast ratio
It may have seemed like Gutenberg development has been on hold due to the delayed JavaScript framework decision, but development is still ongoing. It slowed over the past couple weeks while most of the project’s chief contributors were attending the Automattic GM.
Pendergast has also said that even once a JavaScript framework decision is made, Gutenberg will only require one or two developers to work on the necessary changes, but all other contributors will be able to continue on without any issues.
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Reference: WP Tavern