New Gutenberg Release

This should be fun. The team at Automattic have released version 7.7.0 of Gutenberg, that they have worked on and patted into shape.

The release notes explain the new features as follows:

• Add the initial version of the Patterns UI as a sidebar plugin (This is not the final interface and work is in progress to integrate with the main block inserter).
  • Add an initial set of patterns

Great. What does it mean?

It means that when you click the + button at top left of the screen and use your cursor to move around the options, a little window opens at the side and shows you what it does. It’s supposed to be easier to understand because it is visual.

I am going to add some dummy text in columns and then use the feature that allows me to add a background colour to the columns.

Here goes with this block of text that I am going to repeat spread over two columns.

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

I have to say that working with columns is a big step up from how it used to be.

But there is more. There is now a library of patterns. Patterns are pre-designed (attractive) text layouts or of text and images. One of the layouts is ‘Two Columns Of Text’, and I wonder how that is different from simply creating two columns using the normal Gutenberg button? I’ll think about that another time.

Let’s try something. I just added the pattern named ‘Image and Description’ and it filled the space with a dummy image and text, with the image to the left and the text in small print to the top right.

When I click on the image, it offers me the option to replace the image. So, for the sake of making all this clear I will add the pre-built pattern and then alter it to show what one can do with it.