The latest release of the Gutenberg plugin (10.4) brings block widgets into the Customizer. When customizing widget-enabled areas, a new block inserter icon is now available for dropping blocks into sidebars. This is the first iteration of block management in the Customizer, tackling the technical integration for editing blocks while also taking advantage of the live preview in the Customizer.
Version 10.4 includes several design updates to the Site Editor List View, bringing more consistency to the icon sizing and spacing, as well as new colors for hover, focus, and select states. The publishing UI has been updated to display the site icon and name, adding a more personal touch to this flow while also making it more clear for full-screen or mobile users.
More progress on site editing experiments includes the following notable updates:
- the ability to revert template customizations directly in the editor
- many improvements to the Navigation block, including a new “Post Format Link” variation, a clearer placeholder state, and more style updates
- Better labeling for differentiating “Custom Styles” vs global style changes in the site editor saving panel
- New “manage with live preview link” in the Widgets editor
The block editor still fails to deliver a consistent preview of core blocks on the frontend in many cases. Version 10.4 brings greater parity between the editor/frontend with more consistent markup for archives, latest comments, quote, and separator blocks, with improved default padding to match the browser’s default. The GitHub issue for this improvement contains a to-do list for additional blocks that need more polishing on previews, including search, paragraph, columns, embed, post title, and more.
For a full list of all the enhancements and bug fixes, check out the 10.4 release post.
