Gutenberg: Today and Tomorrow

My notes from Konstantin Obenland’s presentation Gutenberg: Today and Tomorrow at WordCamp LA 2018

Makes it easier to create rich posts
By embracing “the block”, we can unify multiple interfaces into one ui
Unifies shortcodes and widgets into one standard
Comes with advanced layout options
Everything is a block
Use blocks to compose post and pages
All blocks are created equal.
- most used can show up top of list
- has keyboard shortcuts for easy access
Placeholders are key
- embracing placeholders let us create predefined content editing experiences
- editors can use and developers can maintain semantic html
- custom blocks
Direct manipulation and live preview.
Customization of content by editors allows Immediate feedback
- Developers will be able to add theme specific blocks
5.0 release date unconfirmed but expected by end of 2018 so its coming soon. Was supposed launch April 2018, then Sept 2018. Current polishing and adding support for API and fix issues to make transition seamless. Expected launch by end of the year. Still waiting for merge proposal to bring it into core.
500K downloads of Gutenberg plugin and already used for 100K+ posts
Demo of new editing experience
- Support for spotlight mode for focused writing
- Support for full screen mode to remove admin bar
- manage reusable blocks import and export for use by community
- layout blocks
- code editor displays plain html surrounded by comments.
- can editors break react modules? yes, but Gutenberg is good to convert it on the fly to a custom html block

Predefined layouts that users can be filled out by editors
Business opportunities
- impact on theming market
- block market is the future
Gutenberg Phase II
- use blocks to create entire pages and websites not just posts
Themes
- Themes used to provide styles and markup, but they won’t do that moving forward blocks will replace many use cases of themes.
- How will theme developers evolve? Unknown.

Scott Gruber