Version 7.8 of the Gutenberg plugin landed yesterday. The team continues to improve the editor with the refreshed interface work that began in version 7.7. The most useful feature with this update of the plugin is the inclusion of the Patterns API for plugin and theme developers.
This release is not the massive feature release that we experienced with some earlier versions. It is the culmination of many smaller improvements, particularly with improving the user interface and experience. The update includes over 20 bug fixes, some continued work on experimental features like the site editor, and several improvements in code quality.
Editing a post permalink without requiring a save should work correctly, which has been an outstanding issue for over a year. Users can now select multiple categories for the latest posts block as opposed to a single category. And, the experimental full-site editing feature now supports fullscreen mode.
UI Continues Improving
The team began a massive refresh of the user interface in Gutenberg 7.7. With this release, they continued building upon that initial work. Designers have fine-tuned several of the icons for the editor toolbar, which includes the bold, italic, strikethrough, indent, outdent, and spacer icons.
One of the most notable differences is an update to the user-facing text for the post preview button. In the previous version, there was a button that simply read “Desktop.” Once clicked, it would open a drop-down list to preview the post in desktop, tablet, or mobile mode. I had initially thought the team had removed the post preview option until I clicked on it. In version 7.8, that button’s text now reads “Preview,” which is a much-needed change that is no longer confusing.
Overall, the polishing work done on the editor looks good. At this point, I have become so accustomed to it that I have no desire to go back to a regular WordPress install without the Gutenberg plugin installed.
Building Custom Block Patterns
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This article was written by Justin Tadlock and originally published on WordPress Tavern.