Coming Up Episode 2  ## Metadata - Author: [[WP Builds]] - Full Title: Coming Up Episode 2 - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #WordPress - #FSE - #WPBuilds Author: Nathan Wrigley (WP Builds) with guest Anne McCarthy (Automattic) Source: WP Builds Podcast – Coming Up Episode 2 Reference: [YouTube Transcript](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cltqrlArBe4) date created: 2025-08-22 18:55 --- # Title: Previewing WordPress 6.3 – Features, Patterns, and Full-Site Editing with Anne McCarthy ## Table of Contents: - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📖 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-diversity-equity-inclusion-and-belonging-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🔍 DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) --- ## 📝 Summary: Nathan Wrigley hosts Anne McCarthy from Automattic on WP Builds to preview WordPress **6.3** features. The episode highlights **content editing inside the site editor**, the new **command center (Spotlight-like tool)**, improvements to the **navigation block**, a **library system** for templates and patterns, and **style revisions**. Anne emphasizes that 6.3 aims to wrap up **phase 2 of Gutenberg** by focusing on unifying the editing experience and improving usability. The conversation also touches on challenges in UX communication—such as clearly differentiating between editing a page vs. editing a template. --- ## 📖 Main Content: WordPress 6.3 continues to expand site editing with new workflows, more polished navigation, and better design tools. The conversation reveals both the excitement for innovation and concerns around potential user confusion. ### 🗒️ Notes - [0:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cltqrlArBe4&t=46): Anne joins to discuss WP 6.3 roadmap, features, and potential changes. - [2:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cltqrlArBe4&t=144): Roadmap laid out on make.wordpress.org – 6.3 release feels "big." - [3:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cltqrlArBe4&t=225): **Content editing in Site Editor** – clearer separation between template editing vs. page content editing. - [5:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cltqrlArBe4&t=358): Early **Command Center (Spotlight/Alfred-style)** prototype allows instant search/navigation across WP. - [7:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cltqrlArBe4&t=459): **Navigation menus** reintroduced after confusion in 6.2. Now supports multiple menus, visual placement. - [10:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cltqrlArBe4&t=650): Concerns about users unintentionally editing templates vs. pages, causing global site changes. - [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cltqrlArBe4&t=900): Command Center feedback – great for accessibility, fast navigation, but could confuse users without back/undo flow. - [20:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cltqrlArBe4&t=1216): Navigation block challenges—missing styling and mobile menu customization compared to themes. - [23:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cltqrlArBe4&t=1380): Rich Tabor leading **Link UI improvements**—tailored link controls across blocks. - [27:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cltqrlArBe4&t=1641): **Curated patterns + wireframes** planned for directory; partial syncing of patterns explored. - [31:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cltqrlArBe4&t=1864): Patterns are both onboarding aids and learning resources—users can inspect and reverse-engineer. - [34:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cltqrlArBe4&t=2099): **Style revisions**—timeline view lets users rollback design changes; feedback suggests need for better visualization. - [37:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cltqrlArBe4&t=2276): **Preview block themes in Site Editor** – long-requested feature for testing before activation. - [39:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cltqrlArBe4&t=2398): Open questions on onboarding UX when previewing block themes. --- ## 📖 References: - [WordPress 6.3 Roadmap (make.wordpress.org)](https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/6-3/) - [GitHub – Gutenberg project](https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg) - WP Builds Podcast, Coming Up Ep. 2 --- ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1. Original: “This actually aims to help that problem by kind of demarcating clearly where the post content is versus where the template is.” Paraphrase: The update is designed to reduce user confusion by clearly marking whether someone is editing actual content or modifying the site-wide template. 2. Original: “I think this is a real revolution… it won’t save you hours, but it saves small bits of time that add up.” Paraphrase: The command center won’t massively speed up workflows, but its incremental efficiency gains make navigation much smoother. --- ## 📰 Newsletter: 🚀 WordPress 6.3 is shaping up to be a landmark release! Anne McCarthy previewed major updates on WP Builds: - **Command Center**: A Spotlight-style launcher for lightning-fast navigation. - **Content Editing**: Clearer separation of pages vs. templates inside the Site Editor. - **Navigation Block**: Improved controls, menus, and link UI polish. - **Curated Patterns**: New wireframes + design resources in the directory. - **Style Revisions**: Roll back design changes with a visual timeline. - **Block Theme Preview**: Finally, test block themes inside the Site Editor before activation. 👉 The big picture: 6.3 puts the finishing polish on Gutenberg Phase 2. Agencies, educators, and site builders should watch closely—these features could redefine everyday WP workflows. --- ## ✅ Action Items: - Use this as an example for **educating contributors** on how to test and give feedback in Gutenberg outreach. - Advocate within GoDaddy for **command center-like tooling** to improve multi-site management. - Frame **curated patterns** as an onboarding solution in WordPress education and contributor training. - Connect to **OSPO strategy**: highlight parallels between WP plugin ecosystem governance and AI/plugin reliability. --- ## 🧪 Hypotheses: - H1: The command center will increase productivity but may confuse novice users without better onboarding. - H2: Style revisions reduce design risk, encouraging experimentation in block themes. - H3: Curated patterns accelerate adoption by lowering learning curve for new site builders. ### 📊 Methodology: - Run usability studies comparing pre-6.3 vs. post-6.3 navigation flows. - Survey WP agencies on pattern adoption for onboarding. - Analyze support tickets on template vs. page confusion. ### ❓ Questions: - How will users distinguish templates vs. pages in complex sites? - Should the command center be opt-in or default? - Can curated patterns improve accessibility for non-technical site builders? ### 🔮 Future Research: - Explore hybrid “partial sync” patterns across agencies. - Study cognitive load in site editor navigation for neurodiverse users. - Research plugin certification models for block-based UX extensions. ### 💡 Implications: - Successful rollout could accelerate block theme adoption across agencies. - Poor onboarding risks alienating casual users—balance innovation with clarity. --- ## 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: - **Visual**: Strong (UI videos, icons, sidebars). Could add infographics. - **Aural**: Podcast format supports auditory learners. Add transcripts with highlights. - **Verbal**: Explanatory dialogue clear. Could benefit from analogies in docs. - **Kinesthetic**: Limited—suggest interactive demos in playground. - **Logical**: GitHub specs + roadmap provide structure. Add flowcharts. - **Social**: Live comments encouraged, but expand forums engagement. - **Solitary**: Reflection-friendly—deep blog posts provide self-paced learning. - **Naturalistic**: Absent—could use ecosystem metaphors (navigation = pathways). --- ## 📊 - Summary: In this episode of the WP Builds podcast, host David talks with Anne McCarthy from Automattic about WordPress 6.3 and upcoming features. They discuss the new content editing workflow, integration with pattern templates, navigation, and library functionality, and future plans for unified and interconnected interfaces. The episode was sponsored by GoDaddy Pro, the home of managed WordPress hosting that includes free domain SSL and 24/7 support. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cltqrlArBe4&ab_channel=WPBuilds this episode of the wp bills podcast isbrought to you by GoDaddy Pro the homeof manage WordPress hosting thatincludes free domain SSL and 24 7support bundle that with the Hub byGoDaddy Pro to unlock more free benefitsto manage multiple sites in one placeinvoice clients and get 30 percent ofnew purchases find out more at go dot me forward slash WP buildshey hello hi there hi everybody goodmorning good afternoon good evening goodwhatever uh good just good uh it's it'sit's Anne it's Anne McCarthy lookthere's thatit's Anne from automatic uh she's heretoday to chat to us about WordPress6.3 or in fact anything which might becoming up in the future uh we kind ofthrew this together at the last minute so we'll see if anybody joins us live ifthey do that'd be great if not it'llbecome a piece of posterityum but Anne how are youI'm doing well I had coffee and it'sonly 9 A.M so I'm so sorry he's ahead ofme yeah it's not 9am here it's wow youreally are on the other side of theplanet it's five o'clock in theafternoon hereum Ann and I hopefully are going to beboth setting off fairly soon for wordCamp Europe it'd be nice to finally seeyou hopefully I'll see you that would belovely oh for sure yeah I'll be bouncing around I'm a little bit introverted butyou catch me at some point yeah yeahyou're introvert oh okay okay yeah yeahum so we're going to talk aboutWordPress 6.3 if you fancy making somecomments please do just go for it uh ifyou're on wpbuilds.com forward slashlive you have to be logged into a Googleaccount because we've got YouTubecomments and obviously if you're onFacebook that's fineum but you might need to click thelittle Link in the top to let restreamwhich is the platform that we use nowhat we're doing but let's crack on withit the the whole point of this podcast and hands on a really strict deadline sowe've got about 40 minutes to go sowe'll just crack straight on with it thethe whole premise of this episode ofthis show is all about a piece that Amroon the 18th of May which is a very niceday for me that's my birthday so I waslike I know I know it was idealum 6.3 roadmap to 6.3 and in that pieceand just laid out a load of thedifferent bits and pieces that arecoming up in WordPress and as with all WordPress releases it every time it justseems to get bigger it felt like thiswas a really really big one we talkedabout it on the this week in WordPressshow and there was just too much reallyto go into so the Endeavor here was tolet Anne talk about what's coming up ifanybody wants to drop in a comment withconcerns or thoughts or theories orwhatever feel free to do that I'm goingto share my screen uh in a in a momentwith all the different articles and soon but this piece you can find it's onmake.wordpress.org and just go search for pieces on the 18th of May 2023roadmap to 6.3 so I was hoping that Annewouldn't mind if I clicked around on thescreen a little bit and talked aboutsome of the different components thatwe've got going on why they've beenpushed to 6.3 what it is that they'rehoping to achieve and so on and so forthso I thought we'd start here if that'sall right and I'm showing a part of thescreen here which is this sort of likelittle design area uh we've got a littlebit of a new workflow for creating content in WordPress I mean we've seenthis design before we've got like theblack panel down the left hand side butthings have changed considerably do youwant to just let it let us know what'sgoing on oh gosh yeah I can jump rightinto that so so to start there is workbeing done to introduce content editingand so if you were part of the outreachprogram way back in the day beforeWordPress 5.9 you would have known thatthere was a level of content editing inthe site editor before but this actuallyis aiming to introduce that andintroduce it withum restriction so you can see when you're editing the template you can seewhen you're editing the content this isgoing through that Pages section now andit's actually demoing some live pullrequests so this is not like a figmaprototype this is actually pullingtogether a couple different pullrequests and showing off what's possibleand so you'll see here this is what thecontent editing might look like whereyou're editing the about us the pagetitle selecting a featured image but asyou're doing so you can see there's thatedit template if you click on anythingthat's in the template it'll actually switch you over and kind of give you alittle notification so there's some goodfriction there which is a big thing offeedback that we've seen I've actuallybeen itching the pr that's been workingon this is not merged yet and I havebeen waiting to test it with theoutreach program so just a little shoutout to the FSC outreach program whereyou can test some of the things thatwe'll be talking about today this one isnot yet ready but it's very exciting andthis is the command center that the nameis TBD we're actually having a huge discussion in GitHub about the name butthe command center which we'll get intoit yeah we can get into that I'llactually jump around so in thisinterface I think I'm right for thefirst time you're able to you're able tocreate well you're able to edit amendPages plus templates all in the sameinterface so how are you coping withthat because to me that feels like quitea nice thing but also it's quitepossible that you will miss what you'redoing and you'll actually be in thetemplate as opposed to the page andyou'll get confused and you'll update the template and you'll you know I meanit's easy to fix right but the fact thatthey're all basically identical to lookat is interestingyeah it is and it touches on a problemthat um so I work for automatic whichalso um obviously runs wordpress.com andso something we hear a lot fromrequest.com and that's one of thefeedback sources that I'll sometimes tapinto is around people adding uh homepagecontent to their template and then thatbeing shared across everywhere thattemplate's used so not understanding thedistinction between the two so this actually aims to help that problemby kind of demarcating clearly where thepost content is versus where thetemplate is I do think it also allowsyou to build your site out prettyextensively without ever leaving thesite editor which is pretty cool so partof this is also looking into if you wereto add a new page in this experience howyou can incorporate patternsum and make it easier to have a new pageset up as well and just kind of have amore visual visual way to kind of seeall the pieces of your site all within the site editor now are we getting ridof you know WP admin posts and Pages nowum that will still exist and so there issome duplicationum and which I think is necessary rightnowum alongside the pages stuff there'salso work being done to add a navigationsection so right now there's a lot ofwork that I also want to test aroundshowing offum the different menus and this wasactually pulled in 6.2 which was anotherpost from yours truly I'm talking aboutwhy we made that decision to remove that um I just tend to announce all the funstuff right now um so we had to makethat decision to remove it because itjust wasn't very it was only showing onemenu the functionality wasn't quitethere and it was a lot of confusionaround which menu was being shown andnow with this release we've learned fromthat and are now trying to polish it soit'll showum both multiple menus if you havemultiple menus and then also there's asingle menu being able to just see itand actually visually move it aroundum which also is another big point ofview backgrounds around navigationexperienceoh sorry yes no no please you carry on yeah the other thing I wanted to mentionso we have like this new pages sectionum we also have the new navigationsection that has a similar look and thenthere's Styles and then the Styles justbasicallyum I don't think it actually shows it noit's not on this one yeah we can showthat on another one in a minute yeah wecan show it onum but as you can see it's basicallytaking the 6.2 experience of this likedark gray sidebar which a lot of peoplecall like the site View and then ifyou're editing the template it's likethe edit view so the site View and the design section goes from havingbasically a couple different items tohaving a lot so you'll see like designyou'll see navigation you'll see Pagesyou'll see templates and then there'sgoing to be a new thing that actuallyjust landed at 15.9 called library andthat's part of pulling in template partsand reusable blocks and potentially inthe future patternsum so that concept of a library alsoHarkens toum phase three which is thinking abouthaving a kind of a library of items soyou can kind of see a little connection points between this releaseand potentially wants to come in thefuture that's a lot of stuff as you saidyeah a really large amount which so tryto pick it out I think the using thisvideo is actually quite helpful to mebut I'm just wondering with this withthis Pages interface we can obviouslysee so we got this black sidebar whichis becoming like the new normal andwe've got Pages here so we can see thatwe're editing pages and there they areon this site look we've got like eightor nine or something like that I'm justwondering on sites whether we've got like 150 Pages how that might look so itshows the top ten okay and then if youwant to do more right now if you clickmanage all pages currently it pops youback to WP admin it's got the pagessection which is a little bit jarringbut in the future there will be like alist view of thatum I will say one of the things to noteabout this is you'll see the page thatsays welcome it says front page and thenblog it says post page one of the thingsthat's also been done that umit's kind of hard to understand rightnow is like the post-page template Dynamic like where you're you're havingthese like Dynamic pages so like the 404page is technically a templateum so like understanding how that worksand how those relationships work andthen also like understanding when you'vesetum what you've said as your home pageand where that is and so those were thelittle icon changes yeah so these littleicons here indicative of that so thisthis has like I don't it looks like aheader and a sidebarum and the same thing here for 404 so404 search but these are Pages they've got the same icon about team Manifestoand then we've got your two standardWordPress page and home page and welcomethey stand apart as slightly differentI'm just wondering if I was to is do youknow is the future is the intention tomake this interface the interface forediting so you said you know if if youwant to go to manage all pages you cango back to the old WP admin and thenfrom there you'd click on edit would isthe intention for that ultimately to end up back here if you edit it'll alwaysend up in a a UI like thisI do think there needs to be there's anissue that Matthias opened a while agocalled like pathfinding that I'mincreasingly like thinking about becausein pathfinding meaning like imagine yougo to the category section into AP adminum and you click to edit a category likeis there a way that we could alsoconnect that to the site editor rightand like edit the category template forexample like right now those things arecompletely separate I think there willbe a future where they'll need to bedifferent Pathways in as well as like isolated experiences so that's one thingthat I find really interesting with thesite editor is we've done a lot to unifyand then also have distinct interfacesso things like the isolated templatepart editing mode it's like where you'rejust looking at the Temple part justsetting the template part like there's aneed for bothum I do think we will see more morePathways in and maybe it's like we keepwpm and the pages section but thenum the template that the page is usingis a bit more surfaced and maybe there'sa nice connection point between the two as you're switching between themum I'm not really sure yet I thinkthat's to be no yeah it it kind of feelslike one UI the best one UI would be theultimate but obviously that's adifficult place to get to so we can editthese things I'm just going to sort ofslide around here we go so if you werefor example to click on the aboutum pagethis is what you're going to be lookingat and you can see there's some littledetail on the leftum I I'm guessing this was for thefeatured image but I'm not entirely surewhat this what this little panel is for uh you can obviously edit the the titleand so on and then here's the interfacefor that it's fairly minimal you knowyou've got the usual array of thingsthat you can do but you you know youyou're missing uh quite a few of thebits in that interface and then we westep out into this one this is morefamiliar but you can also in this exactsame interface edit the edit thetemplate and the only indication thatyou've got that you're doing that at themoment I think is the breadcrumb trailat the top so you can see that you've come from about us it's governed by thethis template so if you fiddle with thistemplate and save it your about us pageand all the other pages that might beattached to this template are gonna aregonna be updated as well but I'm justwondering how easy that is to mess upthere's a notification too but yeah I'mwith you I want to test this as soon aspossible I think we need to get somelike real World feedback and get peopleinand figure out if it actually is enoughI also think that point you mentioned atthe very end of like in any other pagethat's using this template that is a key thing and like something that I'mhearing more and more about is likeum let's take a simple example someonewants to update their header acrossright right right which template part doyou pick right how do you know whatchatter template part is used across allthe templates do you have to manuallyand that's one of the things right nowis a lot of times people especially ifthey're creating a brand new one theythen have to manually make sure toinsert it into each template and it'slike that shouldn't be the case thereshould be a way for us to to streamlinethat and so yeah well I'm guessing that somebody like you or somebody like me isfairly familiar that this there's atemplate which is bound to a variety ofthings but it isn't showing there is itand um and I guess a novice might thinkokay this is the template for that pageI'm going to modify it here and theabout us page will be changed so I'mgoing to make the image nice and wide asthey do in this example and then go backand look at another page and be like ohgosh whoops yeah yeah yeah whoopsso I think you need to communicate thatlike potentially it's when you're saving potentially it's when you're switchingin I don't know how we can Surface it itmay be something for 6.4 right so eventhough 6.3 is putting a wrap on phasetwo and is aiming to put a wrap on phasetwo I think work will for sure continueto polish its experience in 6.4 yeah umso yeah that's a great great call outyeah it's nice I do like this interfaceI'm just sort of keen to get my hands onit and see see what it is I want to findthat command sent a bit again see if Ican oh it's at the very end was it rightat the end okay okay so this is anothervery big thing and mentioned that we don't know what the name is going to bebut it's if I don't know what theequivalent is on a PC on a Windowsmachine but on the Mac we have thisthing called Spotlight which is builtinto uh Mac OS but also there'scommercial Rivals like Alfred and thingslike that which allow you to do you hita keyboard shortcut and all of a suddenyou've just got everything on the Macavailable to you and I guess theEnterprise here is the same thing youhit a keyboard shortcut you get thistiny little modal which is text you start to type and as you begin to typeall of the different permutations ofwhat that could be start to come out soin this case you can see that Welco hasled us to okay you've got a page calledwelcome but presumably if you typed in Idon't know new it would give you optionsfor new post new page new whateverum and then you can get to where you'retrying to go quickly is this a seriousis this you know is this something whichthe team is serious about do you thinkor is this just like yeah I think it's pretty serious there'sactuallyum I think it's a great accessibilitypoint I actually included it as a pointof discussion and like a post about AIbecause it could be you could imagine aplug-in extending this and having like alittle prompt conversation in somethinglike thisum I don't know if they're yeah I wasgonna say I think there's a video thisis like a good one there's actually acall for feedback right now from Riyadhwho created this featureum to kind of get feedback on you knowhow the future's Landing what peoplewould want to see what they think of it how they might use it there's also Iwill dropumlet's see I'll drop to you Nathan in theprivate chat there's actually like aGitHub issue on like contextual commandsso things likeum open Styles or add custom CSS or openstyle book or clear customizationsumthere's a lot of interesting work beingdone to kind of get this implementedum andI personally like deeply encourage folks to give feedback on it I have found itto be wonderful to use I also havenoticed that like the saving interfacekeeps up um I do think the key is goingto be getting the icons right and makingit clear what you can and can't do whereyou are so making sure it kind of adaptsdepending upon what location you're inbecause I think otherwise it could beit does fit you immediately over so likeit there's no like double click toconfirm so like it would be kind of oddto be like there's no way to be like gobackoh I see yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so I had one situation where I was likeand then I was like oh whoops like howdo I where was I like I forgot where Iwas like there I didn't have a sense oflike the history and so I think theremight beum actually it's open an issue aboutthat of like somehow being able to seelike search history almost or somethingI don't know if Spotlight has that butso what I'm saying is I'm so on thevideo sorry if you're listening to thisbut if you're watching it you're seeinga video and so for example somebodytyped in footer and the the template forthe footer came up um and somebody's typing in single andthe same thing pops up is that doing afull page refresh or is there somethinga bit funky going on where you can'tjust click back in the browser ifI don't know if you could get back inthe browser I actually don't know youprobably couldum I imagine you could because I thinkit is a full page change yeah yeah soyou're probably right you probably couldjust hit the back arrow a bunch and hopeyou don't lose changes I I think this isgreat personally this is for me this isthe most exciting thing but this is a real revolution in thehonestly like 10 years ago I was usingDrupal for my sins actually I reallyenjoyed itum and this was this was a module thatyou could get for Drupal and I had it onevery Drupal site and it was justbrilliant it allowed me to navigate andyou know it it's it's not going to saveyou like hours of time but it'll saveyou a little bit here and a little bitthere and obviously once you get intothe swing of things like like we'retyping in now oh that's handled under post meta then you're sort of Off to theRaces so yeah I I highly encourageeverybody to I think it's really cooland I was looking back on it especiallyif you're like looking to send it or ifit that gets your attentionum I think I'm I'm definitely hoping itmakes it into 6.3 because I do thinkwhen you think about having a cohesiveexperience and some of the stuff thatwe're talking about right now of likeum the gaps that still exist in the waysthey exist I think this helps Bridge itreally nicely it's kind of like addinglist view it's just another tool in the toolboxum to kind of navigate the complexitywith a little bit more ease yeah yeahwell let's hope so let's hope so andpresumably it's toggle toggle on offableso those that don't wish to be anywherenear it can switch it off there isactually I keep mentioning it RossWintel who's a UK based developer he'sgot a Chrome extension called turboadmin which does something similar tothis and because it's a Chrome extensionit it finds that you're on the WordPressadmin of any WordPress site you don't need to install it as the plugin on eachsite and it's really nice so if you'reafter I feel like I talk to them thereis someone I talked to who had builtsomething like this yeah and I reachedout to them and I was like you gottalike can you comment on this with yourexperience because you've builtsomething so similar I wonder if thatwas him yeah it's very good and it'sjust kind of fun that it's a Chromeextension so that you don't have toinstall it it just detects that you'reon you know forward slash WP applicationand now it now it invokes itself andit's yeah it's great and it hides away notices that you don't want as wellwhich is kind of nice uh anyway uh rightthe next thing that I wanted to talkabout that maybe there's a video to showhere I don't know I don't think there isis the the navigation block and uh yeahI've got to say Anne um I thinknavigation is the is the one thing atthe minute which is keeping methoroughly away from putting both feetinto full site editing or site editingtell me why it's it's that it justdoesn't it doesn't yet do what a load of themes that I'm used to from the oldendays uh can do you know like simplestyling options all of that and it justit just has limited capabilities forthings like you know if you're on amobile what the fly out modal pop-upwould look likeum there's just less features basicallyso more or less every developer that Ispeak to and they're talking aboutbaking uh creating a block of some kindof say make a navigation book pleasemake a brilliant navigation block and uh yeah and I just feel that's a bigmissing piece because it's it's one ofthe few bits that every single siteneeds is navigation and it feels likethe the navigation in core at the momentis totally functional and it works andit's definitely got a lot better in thelast release hasn't it with the you knowthe way that you can do things in thesidebar and so on but I I still thinkthere's a way to go so hopefully thiswill solve some of it so what's up hereyeah it'll solve some of it but I will say some of the styling stuff we we kindof Mysterythis release ofneeding to go back and kind of gothrough the technical underpinning soit's a lot of like thestuff that we've talked about or likeyou know being able to edit thenavigation menu when it's mobile onlylike those kinds of things you actuallyhave to go back and deal with thetechnical infrastructure so one of thethings on here and one of the main tasksis like NAB block you slug to referencenavigation menu and that seems reallyTechnical and boring but actually it allows you to do things like you'll knowif you reference it as a slug ratherthan like an ID number you can knowwhich menu is like in the headerso you're able to reference it andactually pull it up intelligently doesthat make sense so yeah there's someinteresting work being done there thatwill greatly improve the base experiencewithout a user having to do anything orto know so it's a very hidden behind thescenes change that has like a cascadingimpact in terms of the user experiencewhich I think is pretty exciting andthen of course there's alwaysimprovements to the fallback mechanism so go back being like what do we showfirst when someone's starting somethingnew or like creating a new site becauseyou don't want to have these like emptyStates basicallyum and then a lot of work frankly isbeing done around the link UIum which I can't yeah I was gonna say Ithink Rich yeah Rich this is great thisthis post gives me a real insight intowhat's going on I love visual stuff I'mI'm I can I can easily understand thatpost much less so that post yes this isreally nice so talk through this this is great yeah so one of the things is likewhen you're using the navigation blockyou're using the same link control thatyou would use across any sort of whenyou're adding a linkum in in WordPress so because of that wehave to think about how to actually kindof curate the experience and kind oftailor what can be shown in thedifferent linksum and so rich is kind of taking a stepback and looking at these differentexperiences including what it looks liketo create a pageum edit the link edit the text have itopen in a new tab like there's all thesesorts of different things to figure out um in different situations so this islooking at the link control elementbasically and trying to toimprove it across the board in all thedifferent use cases but alsospecifically to improve the navigationblock experience because adding linksright now is kind of can be a pain andthat's obviously the main thing you'redoing with the navigation block yeah youhave to have some insight at this pointdon't you into what it is that you wantbecause this this bit here I don'trecall I don't remember seeing this before does it come up with likepre-populated it could be this way doesit I can't remember that okay yeah butthe thing is I I can't remember what thelogic is I think it's like most recentlyedited yeah it's like I think it's themost recently edited but the problem islet's say you have a hundred Pagesyou're not gonna you're going to besearching a bunch of stuff and thenhaving it so I had someone describe tome how he kept having to go back andlook at his Pages find the page title hewanted go back to navigation block andsearch that exact page title like it wasa huge pain in the butt um and there's a bug actually right now aroundum if you're adding like uh creating anew page and going through thatexperience if you just start typingsometimes the typing doesn't keep up andit'll cut offum you're typing inspiration it'll dolike Inspira and then it'll just die sothere's a bug there that needs to befixed but all of this is part of justthe link control and it's kind of itseems weird for the navigation block tobe focusing on this but it actually iscritical to how it functions oh yeahyeah yeah completely experience yeah itfeels like to me this list could be unimaginably long but that reallywouldn't bother me so long as it becauseI'mI'm always on the desktop when I'mediting I'm not really doing any of thisstuff in on a phone or a tablet so Iwouldn't care if this had like 50 linksin it so long as I could see them in inthe viewport and I could just scrollthrough them I'd be happy but I realizedthat would consume a lot of resourcesand probably be a little bit Overkillpeopleum but what else have we got we've gotthatthis is the navigation you'll see thisis like how do we think about this in terms of navigation links so it getsreally complex and you're going throughdifferent flowsum whether you're creating a new pagewhether you're adding a custom linkwhether you're adding a page link like alot of this stuff and then you thinkabout it you take it even further stepback it's like do you want to prioritizeadding custom links or page links tonavigation blocks so this gets very likeuhtechnical right now but the the resultis an improved ux so the stuff if you'relooking at it you're like where are mystyling options where's this and it'slike not necessarily there um another thing being worked on withthe navigation block is improvingsomething Json supportum so uh including things like beingable to style the home link differentlylike having different iconsto yeah style thatum so there's some like minor but likepretty powerfulum quality of life improvements andthat's where some of the Polish comesinto like part of the theme of thisrelease in my mind is creatingcohesiveness and then adding polish abit so it's taking the base experienceof like building up you know that dark gray sidebar having the different blocksbut then it's like let's add some levelof Polish and interconnectedness andcohesiveness between all of itthe uh the purpose of this show reallyis to just highlight these things andthen you really it's your job to go andfind the links in the show notesum and go and examine them in moredetail because obviously we can't reallyshow this in any great detail we'relimited time but also limiting willnaturally fit on the screen but I willlink I will definitely link this becauseyeah it's an important part this is a GitHub page and then we've got media aswell as a whole load of all thedifferent stuff yeah so many things Ithink about yeah yeah no kidding uh okaythe next thing I think we're going totalk about is patterns blocks and lotsof nice new curated patterns if I'munderstanding it that's the job right iscurated pre-made ready to go patternsbuilt by somebody else that you can justsee and put in your website rightyeah so part of what's being done for this release is actually kind ofupgrading and adding new patterns toum the pattern directory and creatingkind of a curated featured section andthen there's also some work being doneto explore having wire frame patternswhich is something folks have lost ohtalked aboutum so there might be some interestingsplit between likecurated versus Community patterns andthen like wireframes in each orsomething like that so people can havethat experience of like I'm trying tojust have like a blank layout and I just want to lay out that looks like thiscool core provided it I just add this init has three columns and it looks like atestimonial perfectum and it's not very opinionatedum whereas other work is being done tohave like more opinionated patterns andso I'm actually and part of this is toallow for things like when you're addinga new page having creation flows thatprioritizes patternsum and there's also some work being donepotentially around like which I actuallyI'm like on the fence about whetherwe'll see what progresses or what we can possibly get in it would be awesome evento get in like the Bare Basics of it butum around improving the dep patternblock which is a very technical thingbut it allows for things likeum full sync of a pattern and partialsink of a pattern and then like anunsync pattern so it can have like thisspectrum of like patterns as they aretoday all the way to something that'smore like a reusable block and then inbetween state which is like you want thedesign to stay in sync but you want thecontent to change so maybe you have like a call to action design and you want itto be the same across your entire sitebut each call to action is different soyou could have this pattern that you'vemade that's partially synced up and youcan make design changes maybe to likethe background color or whatever thebuttonum but then the content will stay lockedand like it can be totally separate whenyou're in each section so like you knowon the about page you have a call toaction that's like contact us on thecontact us page it's like request uhinvoice or something or whatever it might be yeah yeah so they're havingdifferent but the design is exactly thesame so there's work being donetechnically to unlock that which I thinkis really cool for agencies andEnterprise folksum it's more maybe a power user kind offeature but that is also super technicalhow do you keep the sync States in placewhat method do you use how do you savethe data how do you make sure the datastate is saying boil account is the samekind of goes on a rabbit hole but IthinkI just feel this is these you these umcore curated patterns you know I just think this is such a nice Enterprisebecause the the difficulty in learninghow to pull these designs off is not init's not inconsiderable to somebody newto Wordpress and you know understandinghow to group things and which blocks tosurround with what so that the layoutworks and doesn't break and it is mobileresponsive and all that and these aregreat like little learning resources asmuch as anything else you can just dropthese into a site and then go figure howit was actually built look at all of theyou know look in the inspector and see how many things you've got lined up andhow it was all built so I think justfrom a tutorial point of view it'll bereally useful to haveyeah I think it's hugeum I I do think there is a need tohave a strong set of curated patternstoo rich and I are actually kind of tagteaming on that a little bit and tryingto to get like a plethora of like a lotlike imagine like a hundred or twohundred yeah yeah new patterns coming inthis is definitely got the chops forthat hasn't he yeah yeah you can do it in his sleep uh okay so that's gonna bea whole load of curated patterns comingvery soon the next thing that we've gothere is the style book inside the stylesection let me see if I see if I canfind that there was a video somewherewas it this oneumwas it this video that isn't even avideo is it yeah this is the one I wastalking about let me just play throughthis is about 30 seconds and you cantalk through what's going on here andwhat's changed so yeah so basicallythey're just showing the style section you'll see right now that it's there'sstyle variations that are emphasized sosimilar to when you're in the stylesection when you're editing a templateum you can basically switch to differentstyles here and then you can turn on thestyle book and also see the style bookwith the style variations which ispretty neat and this style that comesdown do you do you find that people areusing it because I mean it in theoryit's a really great idea isn't it youcan see on one canvas everything thatmay occur on your site but it because it's disconnected from what is on yoursite I wondered what the usage was likeif it's being widely I think it usage ishigh once people connect the dotsbetween like something that people don'trealize is there's like deep linking sonot only if you open up the Stylesinterface you turn on style book andthen you click on like quote it'll openup the quote settings for Styles so likeI think there is some like neat uh Imainly think of like block themers asusing this but I also have like oncepeople kind of realize that that's what you can doum I think it is used quite a fairamount I encourage people to use it whenthey're first setting up their site andthen honestly after thatum actually I will tell you one of my Iactually have an issue openumaround the the what I've learned withthe outreach program people don't switchstyle variations this much like peopledon't have a standalone site and thenthey're opening Styles and just beinglike that like that is not the averageuse case like maybe when you'reonboarding someone yeah like the first run isn't it it's the first pass on awebsite build fake figure out what youneed and then stay yeah yeah yeahfreaking people out where it's like theyopen up the style section of this siteeditor and this is surfaced as like thetop priority thing so I have an issueopening GitHub kind of discussing likewhat else can we surface how can wesurface things that are maybe morecommonly usedum like potentially if there's like afonts manager maybe something like thatcan go in there like I don't know but Iam worried about it being this emphasized because I don't think it's acommon action I think it's switchingbetween stop variations can almostespecially right now there are some bugsum or maybe yeah there's some bugs thatlike let's say for example you haveum the canary salvation on which iswhat's on right now and you add somecustom CSS to it and you customize itand then you're like ah that looks okaybut let me switch to like a differentone and you switch to different oneit'll fully reset your CSS oh I see okayyeah yeah not not great yeah yeah and that's not cool like you know what I'msaying and like we have you know part ofthis release which we can get into islike revisions four Styles so that helpsum but yeah it's something I worry aboutwhere like maybe yeah you can use yourVisions butum you know How likely is it thatsomeone's gonna know to go do that so II think as a base experience whichreviewing salvation has a couple bugsthat concern me I don't think we shouldbe emphasizing it as an action as muchso okay that's under discussion but I Ithink it's kind of an interesting youare you've got the style section with all of the different possibilitieslisted on the left with the tiny littleeye icon indicating where the style bookum is going to be living yeahinteresting yeah I think it's good itdoes feel like a one-time pass doesn'tit so you mentioned um you mentioned theability to to do revisions for let meget this right templates template partsStyles and so on I think we might have avideo was it that one yes let's gothrough this and you can explain what'sgoing on yeah so this is showing basically atimeline of style changesum this is a crappy video from yourstruly um and then you can kind of changeI know I had to do my own video for thisone um but yeah it's pretty neat theonly thing that I've seen feedback on isthat sometimes it's hard to tell if thechanges is really subtle or if it's notvisual visualized on the screen itselfthat you're looking at right so if thebutton's not there you wouldn't haveseen that button change the big dramatic green to blue everywhere is obvious tosee but yeah we're yeah okay got itsorry yeah yeah so that's one of thethings that I'm a bityeah I'mconcerned about but it's interestingright so like imagine if some of thesestyle changesum also impacted like a template thatyou're not looking atum ohyeah yeah how would you know it's likerevisions are great because you canswitch back and forth between the twoand they are very visual but um you knowthat's something to kind of figure out and consider and to I think wheneveryou're hitting apply maybe there's a wayto say like these are the changesimpacting across these different thingsyeah getting a bit more information yeahor even just I I'm just talking of thehot air really but the ability to add anoteum you know to say what you did at thatmoment you know altered bottom paddingor something like that you know yeahyeah and this flies into like right nowlike the multi entity Save which is justthe save in the site editor doesn't havea lot of information about style changes and this has been a long-standing issueit's like how much information you couldshow and so I think it's all connectedto that where it's like in theory youcould click on one of the timeline itemsand actually see something a bit morebecause it's inherently Visual andyou're not seeing the changes I think wedo need to expose a bit more informationbut what that information is and allthat sort of stuffum TBD and it's also honestly just greatto have this exposed at all like I thinkthat alone is a huge enhancement andthen we can like refine it a bit moreit's another spy am 22nd of May yeah um it'll beI'll link to it in the show notes Ithink the last thing that we wanted topreview was the shooting on this oneshow was the preview block theme usingthe site editor is it this one I don'tsuppose there's a video for this maybethere is yes no oh no this isI was talking about if like lowering theemphasis on Star versions if you go backto the smoothing out the post you were just on the quarter yeah if you scrolldown oh yeah so this yeah yeah rightthank you mister okay let me make it bigand then click play come on Mac there wego right talk us through this thenso this arts and folks which is really cool and alot it came together a lot faster soit's using right now you can't previewblock themes and it's basically allowingyou to preview blockings using the siteeditor which I love I think it's a verycool way to get someone into like knowing it's a new experience knowingit's a different experience getting ataste of the site editorum and then making customizations so youcan make same with like if you're usingthe customizer you can go around andmake a bunch of a bunch of differentchanges and then when you're ready youcan just hit activate and save andswitch your site over and once you hitactivate and save you're just basicallyleft within the site editor um you cansee this is very much just like featuredlike it's like boom this works but maybewe need to add some like onboardingmaybe we need yeah um add something like if it's a childtheme so like that's one of the thingswe actually just tested in the outreachprogram and a number of um number ofitems of feedback came up which wasgreat so like for example previewing2023 design looks really janky like howcan we very quickly design wiseum show that you're previewing and thenshow like the theme a bit separated outbut it's very exciting this has been along-standing pain Pointum in the block theme experience ispeople being unable to preview so that alone I'm stoked about I think it willhelp a lot with adoption I think it willhelp a lot with people like getting ataste of things yeah you may have missedthat right at the beginning right at thebeginning of the video for about aquarter of a second we were in the theold admin which we haven't seen one atall during which now looks a bit weirdactuallyum and you know you go to a theme andyou click uh preview customize you knowum what have you and so that's what'shappening here there's a button hiddenbelow the timeline of the video therewhich allows you to hop in so familiar old interface and here you are having ahaving a fiddle and looking at what yourblock theme can do and seeing what thedifferent options are that's greatthat's really cool I mean another thingwe need to add in is like being able toso like in the with classic themes whenyou're using the customizer to preview aclassic theme you can then switchbetween different themes from within thecustomizer experience and so like that'sanother thing to consider is like howcould you preview other block themesum I do think we need to add some some kind of maybe it's like a welcomeguy that's very brief that's like heynot like a warning but like hey this isa block theme you're using this I Editorto preview this like go for it yeah likeyeahum yeah there's there's always there'salways work to do umit's a it is a work in progress I knowthat you are on a very strict time so Iam going to just call it a day therewell hopefully we'll do this again we'll have a bit more time to get into theweeds of it but Anne thank you so much Ireally appreciate joining us here givingus a quick Whistle Stop tour ofWordpress 6.3 and what might CaveatEmptor what might and we didn't evenwe'd even get to some of this stuff Iknow yeah 2D API yeah we'll have to jumpin again before maybe like 6.3 beta oneor something yeah yeah well you know meI'm always hereI knowI will see you I'll see you in Europe hopefully in a few days time but for nowon fully appreciate it thanks so muchyeah thank you Nathan cheerio, Coming Up Episode 2, WP Builds, 01h1whp109wh58n8r5gam7n9k0.