Gutenberg 4.0 is out, and this release covers a number of items from a long “pending items” list. Other than bug fixes, some new additions include colors for cover image overlays, a new font size picker, better pullquote features, post locking, a new data structure for RichText, and a lot of CSS and UI polishing. This release is being described as being at the “release candidate stage.”
Matt Mullenweg announced that Alexis Lloyd (design and product) and Riad Benguella (technical) will be co-leads for “phase 2” of Gutenberg. Matt also notes that he will “propose and discuss Phases 3 and 4 of Gutenberg” at WordCamp US this December.
Rian Rietveld announced early this week that she is resigning from the WordPress Accessibility Team. Rian cited a “politically complicated” environment, a lack of React developers focused on accessibility and the difficulties of Gutenberg development in general as reasons for her departure. I recommend reading this post in full, especially if you invested in accessibility in WordPress. She is “not leaving WordPress nor accessibility,” so we look forward to seeing her ongoing presence and contributions in the community.
Rian’s resignation has spurred a conversation on Twitter this past week that seems like it’s been a catalyst for the agenda of the Accessibility Team‘s the next planned meeting on make.wordpress.org. The meeting will be held on October 15th.
WordPress plugin developers need to use JavaScript more in order to extend Gutenberg. To support developers as they improve their JS chops, Riad Benguella has created a WordPress JavaScript Plugin Starter. This “starter repository” is written as a tutorial, and it aims to educate developers about the different configurations, setups, and low-level tools WordPress JavaScript uses, post-Gutenberg.
Richard Tape shows how to add a custom sidebar panel to Gutenberg.
Roy Sivan recently announced he has built a plugin that takes Gutenberg data, stores it in the database, and makes it accessible directly via the REST API or the normal /posts/ endpoint.
