Gutenberg 4.3 was released with many updates, including core custom field meta box toggling, an API for annotations, URL validation to link input in RichText, improved navigation and interactions around the Columns and Gallery blocks, and speech announcement support for block multi-selection. Gutenberg 4.4 soon followed and addressed some long-standing usability issues along with additional fixes.
WordPress 5.0 Beta 5 is now available. The block editor has been updated to match the Gutenberg 4.4 release, PHP 7.3 support has been addressed, and there’s been additional polishing on the Twenty Nineteen theme.
Bill Erickson explains how to build a custom Gutenberg site with a Gutenberg-optimized theme. Bill offers a lot of code examples and some helpful advice based on the differences between pre- and post-Gutenberg site development.
More than a few people are expressing concern about the rapid development cycle of Gutenberg. Despite his recognition that much hard work and progress is happening, Joost de Valk says the 5.0 release needs a new timeline to cope with accessibility issues and because “the overall stability of the project isn’t where it needs to be yet.”
10up recently tested the current flow of Gutenberg “to see how well it was received by publishers” using Gutenberg version 3.9.1. The test focused primarily on the final steps in a typical publishing flow. You can read the report for details, including some pain points and locations where more finishing work is still needed. That said, the overall score was an 85.5, which according to Sarah James “is well within the ‘Acceptable’ range.”
David Bisset reported the results of a survey taken from a small sampling of high school students to see how fast they could learn to use Gutenberg. Most had no WordPress experience. Overall, the results were positive. While David acknowledges more testing should be done, he feels comfortable theorizing “that the young are more open to how Gutenberg works and open to change itself.”
Dennis Snell has shared a nice proof of concept I haven’t seen in Gutenberg before —and it’s only 37 lines of code!
Riad Benguella confirms that once WordPress 5.0 is released, the intention “is to have a minor WordPress release twice a month.” These minor releases “will be focused on editor improvements and bug fixes.”
Daily updates (such as this one) are posted on make.wordpress.org for WordPress 5.0 and Gutenberg.
Themes on WordPress.com are “Gutenberg ready” according to a tweet from ThemeShaper. There are reports of opened tickets to add two new tags (wide-align and block-styles) to help users find updated themes. More on this will be made official and public once it’s implemented.
It appears a more discoverable way to edit permalinks (through the document settings) is coming to Gutenberg.
