On May 26, 2021, the Gutenberg team released Gutenberg 10.7. They introduced an integrated pattern directory and powerful block designs.
Gutenberg 10.8 dropped only two weeks later, on June 9, 2021, which improves overall stability and adds new block design features. For example, you can now change font-weight in headings and use custom fonts in lists.
Since Gutenberg 10.7 is the final Gutenberg release included in WordPress 5.8, you will have to wait a bit to see Gutenberg 10.8 and its features in WordPress Core.
In this guide, we’ll cover:
Gutenberg 10.8 Performance Improvements
Gutenberg 10.8 User Experience Enhancements
Final Thoughts: What’s New in Gutenberg 10.8?
Gutenberg 10.7 Feature Recap
Gutenberg 10.7 focused heavily on features that will be part of WordPress 5.8. In addition, the Gutenberg team improved user experience and pressed on with additional block design options.
Gutenberg 10.7 featured:
- Persistent list view in the Post Editor that shows the inserted blocks and makes it easy to navigate the block tree
- Responsive navigation menu that automatically collapses into a “hamburger menu” on smaller devices
- Improved column block that enables color and padding for individual columns
- Fixed position for the Top Toolbar that improves user experience and removes the need for a separate popup toolbar for each block
- Integration with WordPress.org’s Block Pattern Directory that will enable you to preview block patterns and use them on your websites
- Margin controls for Site Title and Site Tagline that encourage customization
- Media width option for the Media & Text block that provides better user interface (UI) control
Integration with Block Pattern Directory is the prime highlight. WordPress users can access the directory from the inserter, making it easier to create rich designs with block patterns.
Gutenberg 10.8 Performance Improvements
In Gutenberg 10.8, the team has attended to the Editor’s performance. They have stopped the Experimental Layout from triggering unnecessary re-renders that were affecting the BlockList. They have also updated Navigation that was unnecessarily re-rendering the unchanged placeholders.
Gutenberg 10.8 User Experience Enhancements
In addition to better performance, Gutenberg 10.8 comes with several user experience enhancements, including an update to the template editor and additional customization for typography.
Improved Template Editor
In version 10.8, the Template Editor’s title area reflects the Post Title. The team also updated the Template Popover, adding helpful hints and increasing the delete button’s size.
Audio and File Block Previews
In Gutenberg 10.7, some users experienced an error that resulted in duplicate uploads while using the Audio or File blocks. The bug occurred for users using a theme or plugin to render custom block styles.
Gutenberg’s team fixed the bug by adding a “Preview” feature to Audio and File Blocks.
More Typography Options
To offer additional design customization, Gutenberg 10.8 includes two new typography features.
First, the team added support for font-weight in the Heading block. Before this, only theme editors could specify a default font weight for headers while designing themes. Using this feature, you can use the heading block in the Editor to override that default font weight.
This feature displays all nine font weights — thin, extra light, light, regular, medium, semi bold, bold, extra bold, black — for each font. If, however, a user selects a weight unsupported by their current font, they won’t see a change.
In the future, when combined with a font family, the Editor will only list options supported by the font family in use.
The second typography feature enhancement resides in the List block, with its supporting font families.
As of version 10.8, Gutenberg’s team has enabled font-family in the List, Site Title, Site Tagline, and Post Title blocks. Only Heading and Paragraph blocks remain without it.
Experiments
In version 10.8, Gutenberg’s team has attempted several experiments to clear the user interface. The setting sidebar will remain collapsed until a menu is selected. Also, the title attribute has been removed from the Site Editor’s main Navigation, as it was redundant with the title in the content section.
Final Thoughts: Gutenberg News — What’s New in Gutenberg 10.8?
Gutenberg 10.8 continues toward a future of full site editing (FSE) and straightforward website creation.
The team remains focused on expanding the design and customization capabilities for each of the blocks in WordPress while ensuring that the Editor’s performance remains stable with each new release.
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