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> It's not an actual problem though, is it? Sure it is. If the first thing thousands of users do after installing WordPress is to pay for a page builder plugi

> It's not an actual problem though, is it? Sure it is. If the first thing thousands of users do after installing WordPress is to pay for a page builder plugin to be able to work with their content in the way they want, that's a problem — it's a sign that the existing editor does not meet their expectations for how a modern CMS/blog platform should let them work, which makes it a good candidate to be solved in the platform itself. And if completely new users struggle to format content without frustration (I have watched many people trip with the “Classic” editor in new user orientations on simple things like adding and positioning an image or video), that is also a problem, because it affects their first impressions and gets in the way of whatever their personal or business goals are. Gutenberg is aimed at solving both of those real problems; I think on the whole it does it well, and it's enlightening to see how positively some people react to it: https://twitter.com/antpb/status/1052996833264455680 https://twitter.com/antpb/status/1052996833264455680 > The editor screen and the front-end are going to look and feel very different. You can style the editor with CSS, and re-use much of your front-end theme styles in the editor stylesheet via Sass. This is how the upcoming new default WordPress theme (Twenty Nineteen) already works: https://github.com/WordPress/twentynineteen https://github.com/WordPress/twentynineteen > So we're still storing messy blobs, but now we're going to split up those blobs and add more mess while in editing mode. The “mess” in editing mode is needed to help people style their content more intuitively; you can't have a WYSYIWYG web UI without adapting the page content with scaffolding to enable styling controls. There are some big and entirely valid criticisms around Gutenberg (accessibility support, general PR issues, release delays), but “not being designed to address a real user problem” isn't one of them. It will take a lot of time to address all issues and turn the community around to it, and this is just the start.

pknight 8y ago
I think you've missed the point a bit. I'm trying to make a distinction between what is driving Gutenberg and what it's trying to solve and why. Improving the editing experience is a valid justification - of course - but it's not happening because users are demanding it or because their problems are not being met already. It's primarily vehicle for accomplishing other goals, i.e. improving .com's competitive offering and managing the transition to a JS centric code base. Those things are more important. Understanding the priorities in play explains in part why Gutenberg is causing friction better than saying it exists because it is trying to solve technical problems for users. That would lead you to think that the technical problems were thought about really hard and that is some primary goal. It's not. It's just WordPress trying to modernise an interface. > You can style the editor with CSS, and re-use much of your front-end theme styles in the editor stylesheet via Sass. The reason I bring up the editor and WYSIWYG is that it shows the disconnect between some lauded goal of providing a more seamless experience and the thought that went into the technical solution. My feeling is that we ended up where we are not because we were trying to solve a problem in the best way, but because we were just trying to cram in a new JS way of doing things. It explains better how we arrive at the following mess. Let me show you it through the lens of styling a post: https://imgur.com/a/AThzNns https://imgur.com/a/AThzNns > The “mess” in editing mode is needed to help people style their content more intuitively; you can't have a WYSYIWYG web UI without adapting the page content with scaffolding to enable styling controls. Look at the gallery I posted and tell me honestly, are you really saying this is the only way to provide 'intuitive editing'? Of course that is not true, it's simply how Gutenberg decided to implement it. Of course, you can compose your CSS workflow to fit around how Gutenberg's editor functions and you'll get fairly good results if you do. But this is a workaround, it's made the UI a first class citizen at the expense of the rest. So theme developers have to think in terms of the UI, not just what the markup looks like on the front-end. And content creators are forced to think in terms of blocks. It's an UI that is altering how people interact with it, for its own sake.
- lmm 8y ago
  > Improving the editing experience is a valid justification - of course - but it's not happening because users are demanding it or because their problems are not being met already. What's the difference between "compete on more level terms with the state of hosted solutions like WIX, Weebly, Squarespace who offer increasingly simple visual building experiences" and "solve problems for users". If there is something that is making people choose WIX/Weebly/Squarespace, isn't that something precisely: a problem that those things solve and default wordpress (currently) doesn't?
  - pknight 8y ago
    Because it's a case of a for-profit company competing for paying customers of other hosted platforms. Most WordPress sites don't have that competition, they run the self-hosted version and they are already well served by 3rd party solutions for their more complex needs. So now the community project is trying to prioritise the goals of the for-profit company at the expense of carefully developing solutions to meet its own users in a proportionate way. That's how we've ended up thinking of accessibility/custom fields/theme development/backward compatibility as things that are secondary priorities, if that.
    - lmm 8y ago
      > Because it's a case of a for-profit company competing for paying customers of other hosted platforms. Most WordPress sites don't have that competition So free users don't want the features that paying users want? Whyever not? Surely the fact that some people are willing to pay for a particular feature indicates just how important that feature is to a lot of users.
      - pknight 8y ago
        If that were true, why are so many existing users apprehensive about Gutenberg? Self-hosted users of WordPress have different priorities even if most would like a nicer editor, it matters how it comes about and it matters what other sacrifices are made in pursuit of the project.
subpixel 8y ago
> If the first thing thousands of users do after installing WordPress is to pay for a page builder plugin to be able to work with their content in the way they want, that's a problem Or, it's an opportunity. Look at Shopify - is it a problem that the first thing a new Shopify user does is to head to the Shopify app store to buy and install a handful of plugins?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- modernerd 8y ago
  Completely agree that access to plugins is a huge plus. Except if a very large number of Shopify users start to install the same plugin or plugin type, and you start to see articles titled "60 of the best [page builder|digital download] plugins for [WordPress|Shopify]", and you field daily support requests asking, "which page builder plugin should I use?", and users actively avoid an existing feature in your service to use a third-party add-on that does the same thing your feature was doing only better. At that point it's a great candidate for a core product feature or enhancement, as has been the case with Gutenberg. Also worth noting there is no official WordPress.org paid plugin store and paid plugins are typically not hosted services as with Shopify. The average experience WordPress users get when shopping for, maintaining, and getting support for plugins is much less smooth than a hosted platform like Shopify. (There are great WP plugin developers and terrible Shopify ones too, but fewer of the former than the latter.)

pknight 8y ago

I think you've missed the point a bit. I'm trying to make a distinction between what is driving Gutenberg and what it's trying to solve and why. Improving the editing experience is a valid justification - of course - but it's not happening because users are demanding it or because their problems are not being met already. It's primarily vehicle for accomplishing other goals, i.e. improving .com's competitive offering and managing the transition to a JS centric code base. Those things are more important. Understanding the priorities in play explains in part why Gutenberg is causing friction better than saying it exists because it is trying to solve technical problems for users. That would lead you to think that the technical problems were thought about really hard and that is some primary goal. It's not. It's just WordPress trying to modernise an interface. > You can style the editor with CSS, and re-use much of your front-end theme styles in the editor stylesheet via Sass. The reason I bring up the editor and WYSIWYG is that it shows the disconnect between some lauded goal of providing a more seamless experience and the thought that went into the technical solution. My feeling is that we ended up where we are not because we were trying to solve a problem in the best way, but because we were just trying to cram in a new JS way of doing things. It explains better how we arrive at the following mess. Let me show you it through the lens of styling a post: https://imgur.com/a/AThzNns https://imgur.com/a/AThzNns > The “mess” in editing mode is needed to help people style their content more intuitively; you can't have a WYSYIWYG web UI without adapting the page content with scaffolding to enable styling controls. Look at the gallery I posted and tell me honestly, are you really saying this is the only way to provide 'intuitive editing'? Of course that is not true, it's simply how Gutenberg decided to implement it. Of course, you can compose your CSS workflow to fit around how Gutenberg's editor functions and you'll get fairly good results if you do. But this is a workaround, it's made the UI a first class citizen at the expense of the rest. So theme developers have to think in terms of the UI, not just what the markup looks like on the front-end. And content creators are forced to think in terms of blocks. It's an UI that is altering how people interact with it, for its own sake.

lmm 8y ago
> Improving the editing experience is a valid justification - of course - but it's not happening because users are demanding it or because their problems are not being met already. What's the difference between "compete on more level terms with the state of hosted solutions like WIX, Weebly, Squarespace who offer increasingly simple visual building experiences" and "solve problems for users". If there is something that is making people choose WIX/Weebly/Squarespace, isn't that something precisely: a problem that those things solve and default wordpress (currently) doesn't?
- pknight 8y ago
  Because it's a case of a for-profit company competing for paying customers of other hosted platforms. Most WordPress sites don't have that competition, they run the self-hosted version and they are already well served by 3rd party solutions for their more complex needs. So now the community project is trying to prioritise the goals of the for-profit company at the expense of carefully developing solutions to meet its own users in a proportionate way. That's how we've ended up thinking of accessibility/custom fields/theme development/backward compatibility as things that are secondary priorities, if that.
  - lmm 8y ago
    > Because it's a case of a for-profit company competing for paying customers of other hosted platforms. Most WordPress sites don't have that competition So free users don't want the features that paying users want? Whyever not? Surely the fact that some people are willing to pay for a particular feature indicates just how important that feature is to a lot of users.
    - pknight 8y ago
      If that were true, why are so many existing users apprehensive about Gutenberg? Self-hosted users of WordPress have different priorities even if most would like a nicer editor, it matters how it comes about and it matters what other sacrifices are made in pursuit of the project.

subpixel 8y ago

> If the first thing thousands of users do after installing WordPress is to pay for a page builder plugin to be able to work with their content in the way they want, that's a problem Or, it's an opportunity. Look at Shopify - is it a problem that the first thing a new Shopify user does is to head to the Shopify app store to buy and install a handful of plugins?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
modernerd 8y ago
Completely agree that access to plugins is a huge plus. Except if a very large number of Shopify users start to install the same plugin or plugin type, and you start to see articles titled "60 of the best [page builder|digital download] plugins for [WordPress|Shopify]", and you field daily support requests asking, "which page builder plugin should I use?", and users actively avoid an existing feature in your service to use a third-party add-on that does the same thing your feature was doing only better. At that point it's a great candidate for a core product feature or enhancement, as has been the case with Gutenberg. Also worth noting there is no official WordPress.org paid plugin store and paid plugins are typically not hosted services as with Shopify. The average experience WordPress users get when shopping for, maintaining, and getting support for plugins is much less smooth than a hosted platform like Shopify. (There are great WP plugin developers and terrible Shopify ones too, but fewer of the former than the latter.)