Gutenberg 7.1 – Refreshing Interface, Table Captions, And a Lot More

On December 11^th, Gutenberg got a booster dose by its developers by introducing an update – Gutenberg 7.1! Plenty of bug fixes, merging almost 160 pull requests, introducing a couple of new APIs, and a lot of other experimental stuff for the WordPress community.

While many WordPress development services providers have welcomed the update with a positive note, others seem not so pleased with the recent version of Gutenberg. Now, you will not be able to see that traditional editor in the dashboard. Yes, that’s the first change you will notice if you update to the latest version.

Among the major changes introduced, the revamped layout of the welcome page, table captions, and enhancements in mobile editing are the heroes of the Gutenberg 7.1. Also, the team has tried to fix certain bugs reported in the previous version. However, the performance factor is still missing in Gutenberg 7.1. Many people noticed small performance slowdown in version Gutenberg, but the overall improvements shown may supersede this concern. Let’s dive into Gutenberg 7.1 update to know what all changes, improvements, and concerns that may make or break your confidence in this block editor.

What’s changed in Gutenberg 7.1?

Say Goodbye to Classic Editor

Many of you might be complaining about the classic editor in the dashboard of WordPress. Well, if you have ever wished to replace it or remove it, your wish has been granted! In this version, you will not find the classic editor in the dashboard. However, it is sad news for the people supporting that classic version. But there is a workaround for such die-hard classic editor fans. If you really like to use classic editor, all you have to do is to install one plugin introduced by WordPress and get your class editor in the dashboard again.

What about the improvements?

Welcome Guide Modal

Starting with improvements, the major improvement is a brand-new welcome guide modal to help you take a bird’s eye view about the Gutenberg editor.

If you are into WordPress Development Company, you must have seen the previous version of the welcome screen, which was not so user-friendly. A new welcome screen will introduce block editing experience to the new users with a quick tutorial.

Select & Edit Modes

With Gutenberg 7.1 update, block selection is simplified. It brings a toolbar button that helps you switch between “Select” and “Edit” modes.

In case you click on “Select” mode, it will hide the options for editing the post. If you wish to switch edit, all you need to do is to simply click on the block and you will be back to edit mode.

Dragging & Dropping Images into the featured image

Gutenberg 7.1 has simplified the way of adding featured images for the posts. Unlike the previous version, where you have to select an image and upload them from the media library, you can simply drag and drop a specific image into the featured image box. So, forget about the manual and tedious approach to upload images!

Table Block Caption

Did you ever want to add captions to the tables of your post? Well, it is possible now with table captions in Gutenberg 7.1. You can add captions at the bottom of the table using a new UI toggle in select and edit modes. Edit mode will enable edit within a table whereas select will help you select a specific table element and add a caption.

This will help WordPress Development Services providers to get rid of downloading and adding a specific plugin to add the caption. However, you cannot leverage any advanced features like plugins using this feature.

Improvements to Mobile Editing

With the Gutenberg 7.1 update, now you can leverage from the fixed toolbar for editing various elements like paragraphs, links and more under the mobile toolbar.

Multi-Block Selection Improvements

The block editor now has a native multi-block selection process enabled for the users. Now you can use native colors and select specific text in the blocks. Selecting multiple blocks, copy it, and past it somewhere works smoothly. This empowers users to completely replace multiple blocks at once without wasting more time.

However, there is a small catch in this feature! When you select any block, the editor selects all texts within a block. This means you cannot select partial text from any specific block.

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Alignment for the Navigation Block

If you were missing the navigation block in the 7.0 version, now your wait is over! This is one of the important features introduced in Gutenberg 7.1 update as it will simplify full site editing while allowing users to set the navigation menu accurately. However, this feature still needs further evaluation as we don’t know how it will behave on the tiny screens of mobile devices.

Default Template

Version 7.1. comes up with the all-new demo template named “index.html”. This will act as a default template in case no templates are available. This can be an experimental step from the WordPress team to help the users get closer to the concept of full site editing.

Hmm, did they come up with any bug fixes from the previous version?

Well, to overcome the criticism, the team has introduced bug fixes in 7.1. release. Starting from the issue of resized image block overlapping, snack bar notices position, CSS style of color picker component, and alignment of date picker days to code block example string, WordPress has fixed more than 20+ issues reported or faced by the users.

Okay, but what about the performance???

Based on the statistics shared by WordPress, the average loading time of post in 7.1 is around 7.45 seconds, which is more than Gutenberg 7.0 version (which was 6.84 seconds). Moreover, the keypress event (typing) takes 88.56 milliseconds, which is lesser than the 7.0 version. Hence, considering the performance aspect, Gutenberg 7.1 is a little slow, but against the benefits and features introduced can be a good reason to consider it worth it!