This post summarizes the weekly editor chat meeting (agenda here) held in Slack. Moderated by @annezazu.

Announcements

Gutenberg 11.4 launched

Release notes coming soon after a quick fix. For now, some highlights:

• The Gallery Block now acts as a wrapper for core Image Blocks thanks to the Gallery Block Refactor. Plugin and theme authors, please do check out out this dev note to get up to speed on backwards compatibility
• The Featured Image block now has the option to add duotone filters so you now have even more ways to add your own style to your content.
• Padding support was added to the Buttons Block making it easier to get the spacing just right.

5.8.1 RC launches today (Sept 1)

Based on the schedule previously shared, 5.8.1 RC will launch today with the release coming on September 8th. If you can, please help test the release.

Final day for the current FSE call for testing (Sept 1 )

It’s the last day to explore the current FSE Outreach Program call for testing. If you have time, share your thoughts! If you don’t, please help amplify by sharing with others.

Reminder: monthly block theme meeting in #themereview

A reminder was shared that there is a block theme meeting in for anyone keen to chat about what’s happening with block themes. This is a recurring monthly meeting so if you missed today’s, don’t worry!

Monthly Priorities & Key Project Updates

The overarching plan for September has not yet been shipped yet so we based today’s conversation on the July & August Plan. As a reminder to those working on these projects, async updates are both welcomed if you can’t make the meeting and needed.

Navigation Editor

For the Navigation Editor portion, @talldanwp shared a lovely update. Here are some highlights:

• A plan has been formed for migrating from the customize API to the REST API in the navigation editor.
• The nav editor header’s design has been refreshed.
• Some conversation is underway around extensibility of the editor (join in if you’re interested). 

Mobile

Shipping:

• Block picker search

 Notable fixes:

• Fixed an npm install breakage on Gutenberg’s trunk branch due to third-party dependency we were building that had an unpinned typescript dependency.

In Progress:

• Embed block (hoping to release some inline previews in our next release)
• GSS Font size, line height, colors

Patterns

For patterns, some context was shared amongst the core editor wranglers from @paaljoachim that the design tool overview enhancements will ultimately also trickle down to make pattern creation easier, more responsive, etc.

Styling

I’m going to reuse part of the async update from André since he’s done a ton of work there. Lots of work is underway with adding duotone support in theme.json along with a PR around enabling global styles to all themes. Expect work to continue on this path for the week ahead.

No update for the Template Editor or the Navigation Block

If anyone has any context to add around the Template Editor or the Navigation Block, feel free to chime in below in the comments.

Task Coordination

Feel free to add items to this post if you weren’t able to make the meeting.

@mikeschroder

Shipped:

• Closed 32024 via [51677]. Thanks everyone for your help, including with the follow-up tests commit! 
• Opened two Video Block poster related PRs (34415 and 34411).

This week, planning to investigate 33437.

@oandregal

• Recently updated GitHub username.
• Helping with reviews, most notably adding duotone support in theme.json.
• Created a few PRs in this area of work: the main one is perhaps enabling global styles to all themes. I’ll continue to work in this area for the next week.

@zieladam

• Merged a new widgets /render endpoint
• Started “thunk-ifying” of core-data, got to the point where we’re able to slice Jarda’s main PR into a series of smaller, high-velocity PRs. The first one was #33201 and more are coming
• Fixed a few problems with retrieve_widgets in core a bit (1524, 1525)
• Brainstormed the navigation /reorder endpoint in #25093
• Started #34335 to fix sending too many API requests when saving widgets. It seemed simple at the beginning but we ended up asking “should we support .raw attributes and other post-specific logic in core-data?”

@youknowriad

• I’ve worked a bit on performance. I want to get back to some layout related work.
• I’ve reviewed a number of PRs as well.
• I’ve spent some time this week exploring some wild ideas for block registration (both to make easier and more universal/language independent). For the curious, the repo is here http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20210908144455/https://github.com/youknowriad/blocky it’s no where near ready but I’d love to learn more about your custom blocks, if you have examples or ideas about how you’d ideally write them and what use-cases would you want to see for the simplified “view” property.

@joen

• I’m as always focused on the navigation block and all sorts of things related to that, lately with some mockups for how to enable click-invoked dropdown menus, as well as refactoring to use gap for spacing menu items.
• A lighter navigation building experience remains a priority, and I’d love to pair with a developer on exploring the approach mocked up here.

@gziolo

• I worked on a proposal to split block registration from filtering, but I landed on a solution that ensures that all 3rd party filters are correctly (re)applied to all registered blocks. It might fix many existing issues for 3rd party blocks and their integration with plugins that extend blocks. It waits for feedback.
• I’m still waiting for feedback for the proposal that adds a way to absorb inspector controls from the parent block.

@annezazu

• Recapping and responding to the current call for testing for the outreach program.
• Finalizing the next call for testing(more exploration than call for testing right now on theme switching).
• Drafting some core editor improvement posts + assisting with an upcoming News post
• Shipped a YouTube video all about patterns.
• Triaging unlabeled PRs (down from over 100 to in the 20s). The unlabeled PRs that are left I am not quite sure what to do with so feel free to jump in.

Open Floor

Offer to run a Gutenberg Release for the first time. Raised by @mikeschroder.

If folks are interested, after shadowing @talldanwp (thanks again!), I would love to try running a Gutenberg release for the first time. Whenever it works best for the team is okay with me!

Next step: @priethor will coordinate since he helps wrangle the release process.

Proposed migration of E2E specs to Playwright. Raised by Bart Kalisz.

A proof concept was shared and well received thus far as part of a proposed migration to Playwright. At this point, a wider discussion needs to happen with impacted parties to ensure that folks are willing to follow the proposed changes. A few folks chimed in agreeing that a wider discussion needs to happen along with perhaps a comparison with Cypress (mentioned by @swissspidy). Depending on how things go, a Make Core post might make sense.

Next steps: Bart alerted the crew in #core-test and @annezazu will ensure that it gets discussed in the Core Dev meeting for wider attention.

Call for community ideas for FSE Outreach testing calls. Raised by @annezazu.

I’d love to start experimenting with community members sharing ideas for what to test in the outreach program. If you’d like to suggest an idea for a call for testing, know it’s very welcomed and all ideas will be weighed against current project priorities to figure out what makes the most sense to pursue. You can share ideas directly in the #fse-outreach-experiment slack channel or via DM to me! In case you’re curious about how calls for testing have been wrangled in the past, it’s typically been a combination of monthly project priorities/release priorities + my own testing/what I can make happen + conversations with contributors.

#core-editor, #core-editor-summary, #summary