So I’ve just installed WordPress 5.0 on my multi-site installation. No errors, no apparent problems so far. I can soon delete my installation backup. I have a bit of time today so I thought I’d dip my toe into the wild new world of Gutenberg.
I’ve been used to, and enjoy working with a couple of different visual post/page builders (Vantage, Divi). I’m also at home with the classic editor in both visual and text (HTML) modes. But Gutenberg is the future, so I might as well get used to it – and maybe even embrace its workflow and strong points.
In general, I’m not a fan of interfaces that “hide” functionality to “unclutter” things or to make them more “elegant”. I’d prefer knowing that all my tools are there and I can see them. Often I don’t trust an interface that “looks simple”. My experience is that most interfaces that “look simple” are simple and even simplistic. It’s not always true and I truly appreciate an interface that is not intimidating to the neophyte but packs all the functionality that I need in ways that are easy to discover and access. I have the impression that I (and other “functionality freaks”) are under-served by most interface designers. It seems like a gap between designers and power users – an unfortunate gap.
First “bug” – As I’m typing this off the top of my head (you noticed?), I’m pausing to reflect. While I pause, the auto-save functionality kicks in and moves my cursor to the beginning of my paragraph! (Edit: fixed – see final thoughts below) This is exceedingly annoying. I hope it’s not a feature. At any rate, if I were a big-time content creator and ever stopped to pause and reflect on my work, I’d be seriously up in arms about this one.
That being said, I’m generally enjoying the experience in Gutenberg so far. I also want to try and move with the Gutenberg intent as opposed to simply bringing my understanding of another way of doing things to this experience and opposing change. I want to push against the Luddite tendencies of my upper-middle-age!
Final thoughts:
- The annoying “cursor jump” is seriously annoying
- Edit 2019-01-19 – The annoying cursor jump was a function of a plugin conflict. I found some GitHub posts that mentioned different plugins that were the source of this behavior. In my case it was the Pods plugin. I wasn’t using it and when I disabled it, the problem went away. Here’s the thread: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/12942#issuecomment-455704147
- The Gutenberg beard game is strong and enviable!