Gutenberg 1.5, another weekly update of Gutenberg Editor was released yesterday. This time, the changelog had more than 40 improvements and introduced several major changes to the plugin. Gutenberg 1.5 has included some long-awaited meta boxes support, improvements in the writing flow with tweaks to block navigation, added the ability to insert blocks between other blocks quickly, and more. The new update has also made Gutenberg the default editor if you have the plugin activated.
Let’s have a quick look at the added features and improvements in Gutenberg 1.5.
The newest version of Gutenberg Editor has added initial support for meta boxes in an Extended Settings panel beneath the post content. You will not be able to see this bottom panel unless they have a plugin installed that includes meta boxes. The sidebar Setting panel must already be toggled open for the bottom panel to be displayed. The Extended Settings panel will reveal the toggles for plugins that have meta box settings available.
Tammie Lister, the Gutenberg design lead said that this was the first step towards supporting the meta boxes and there would be iterations to follow. She also warned that it is possible some advanced meta box uses will not work as expected. The Gutenberg team is eager to receive feedback on these cases. If you discover any issues with the meta box support, you can post them on GitHub or via the plugin’s feedback form regarding the issue.
Gutenberg 1.5 has also added a new inserter button between the blocks. Matias Ventura, the Gutenberg engineer has demonstrated with an animated gif in the release post.
Another new feature added to Gutenberg 1.5 is the dropdown menu in the Publish button. It currently supports the visibility and posts scheduling features.
Gutenberg contributors are looking for feedback on this implementation and are willing to explore some alternate design options as well. They agreed that it is more important to make the Publish button area pluggable and to work on adapting it based on feedback.
Classic Editor, a new plugin for those who want to completely disable the Gutenberg editor is now available on WordPress plugin repository. The plugin requires WordPress 4.9 Beta 2 or newer and Gutenberg 1.5+ version. With the two modes given to the users, they can choose whether to fully replace the Gutenberg editor or allow access to both the old and the new editors.
You can switch between the two modes by visiting Settings > Writing. Classic Editor is the official plugin recommended by the core contributors if you want to turn Gutenberg off.
Mentioned below are some of the other enhancements included in Gutenberg 1.5:
- Improve block navigation performance
- Allow multi-select to work on shift-click
- Insert new block from title on enter
- Better clearing of block selection
- Allow blocks to disable HTML edit mode
- New embed icons
- Add a default block icon
- Fix undefined colors warning
- Fix broken upload button on image placeholder
Tammie Lister said, “The plan is to still have the plugin ready by December, but with holidays the actual merge proposal might be next year.” She also said that it is important that they get as many users and as much feedback as possible at this very point.
The Gutenberg Editor plugin has around 3,000 active installs till date.
Subscribe here to keep up with the weekly updates of the Gutenberg editor. You can drop your feedback on Gutenberg’s GitHub repository and also in the core editor channel on WordPress Slack. And if you have anything to add, share or ask, feel free to use the comments section below.
Source: WP Tavern, WordPress.org