Photograph Works

  • From Classic Editor To Gutenberg

    Hello world. This is a post I am writing using the Classic editor. I haven’t used this editor for a long while, not since I switched to Gutenberg. I am writing it and I cannot see any way to change to Gutenberg while I am in this post. So I am going to save it and then look at the options. First though, a screen grab so that I can illustrate what is happening.

    How To Change A Post From the Classic Editor to Gutenberg

    Here are my notes and a series of screen grabs showing what I did to convert from Classic editor to Gutenberg.

    First I had to save the draft and then go out of the post. When I hovered over the post in the list, I could see the options for Editor and Classic Editor.

    I clicked on ‘Editor’ and that opened the post, it was still in Classic, which I could see from the word ‘Classic’ against a grey background in the little menu bar.

    Know I know where I am, because I have done this many times when I have gone back to old, previously-published posts for whatever reason and changed them to Gutenberg.

    Click in the menu bar that has the word ‘Classic’ in it, or click on the paragraph of your text – either place will do it – and you will see that three vertical dots appear along with all the other stuff.

    Click on the three dots and that brings up a vertical menu, and the one I want is the second one down the list – ‘Convert to Blocks’. Click that and everything is converted to blocks and the new Gutenberg editor.

    Done!

    OK, now that you are in Gutenberg, how do you use it?

    Using Gutenberg

    There are a few key things that will make your life easier:

    • The reason it is called a block editor is that each paragraph, image, heading, quote, or whatever is in its own block.
    • The default block is a paragraph of text.
    • You can change a block from one type to another by hovering on it and using the tools in the mini menu bar that opens up over the block.
    • All the blocks are listed top left of the page, and you can see them by hovering over the list under the plus sign.
    • The plus sign at the left of a new block does the same job and you can add different types of blocks by hovering on that plus sign.
    • Finally, look over at the side bar on the right. You use it to change text size, set Drop Caps, and change the colour of the text and the background colour to the text.

    Examples

    Here are a few variations of this same piece of text using the block tools and the settings in the side bar. (The neat thing is that I didn’t even have to retype the text, I just clicked to duplicate it).

    Here are a few variations of this same piece of text using the block tools and the settings in the side bar.

    Here are a few variations of this same piece of text using the block tools and the settings in the side bar.

    Here are a few variations of this same piece of text using the block tools and the settings in the side bar.

    Here are a few variations of this same piece of text using the block tools and the settings in the side bar.

    Here are a few variations of this same piece of text using the block tools and the settings in the side bar.

    And if for whatever reason you want to stay in the same block, and don’t want to start a new block when you start a new line or a new paragraph, just hold down the shift key when you change lines.

    That will keep you in the same block. (It’s useful when you want to make a list.)

  • Great Argus Pheasant

    This is a photo of the wing and tail feathers of the Great Argus Pheasant in the Museum of Zoology here in Cambridge. The bird is of course stuffed. There is a notice about conservation and environmentalism with the glass cases of stuffed birds that line one side of the exhibition hall.

    Basically it says that that was then, and this is now, and we think differently that in those times.

    Of course, in those times pesticides and plastic waste had not wreaked the havoc that they have done in these more enlightened times.

    The exhibit that surprised me was the Wandering Albatross. Tamara and I saw Wandering Albatrosses flying low near the boat on a trip we took. We took a boat trip out into the Atlantic off the coast in South Africa to see Humpback Wales and Southern Right Whales.

    Seeing the bird in the air, flying low over the waves, I had no idea just how big it is.

    It is the size of a pig. Huge. And a great pity that it is dead and in a case. Of course, it would have died of old age many many decades ago. But still.

    Linnaeus named the Great Argus, and he chose the name ‘argus’ because of the eye-like patterns on its wings, in reference to Greek mythology, and Argus, the hundred-eyed giant.

  • Post Format: Image vs Standard

    Read this first

    Between posting this a few minutes ago and now, I have changed the theme to the new TwentyTwenty theme. It doesn’t have the same post format options, but it allows full-width images within Gutenberg editor – just like the previous theme (the one I was using before McKinley) allowed.

    With that out of the way – read on!

    Before Gutenberg

    Does anyone recall what the Post Format options looked like in the Classic editor before Gutenberg? Maybe someone is still using the Classic editor?

    An iris against a dark background.

    I changed themes a couple of days ago and I thought that this new theme (McKinley) could not display images that stretch across the page. Then I noticed the ‘Post Format’ option.

    I simply never think about post format and use ‘Standard’ all the time.

    I changed the post format to ‘Image’ and for this theme at least, it allows for full width images. If I keep the document in Standard format, the image is narrower – like this:

    Which just goes to show that I have published hundreds of posts without ever thinking of the post format options, even though I know they exist.

    Does anyone recall what the options look like in the Classic editor before Gutenberg?

    Here’s what the options look like in the back end:

    Iris against a dark background

    I ‘manufactured’ the photo at the top of this post, of an iris against a dark background. The original is an iris against an out-of-focus jumble of greenery. It looked a mess and so I darkened everything and then painted in the rest to make this composition.