If the classic TinyMCE interface is taken away what happens to WooCommerce and the product editing screen?

While the technical conversation above may be interesting to some, for many usability is more important. The block editor is a great progression but for some use cases it doesn’t offer a great solution.

The article touches on ACF and you could add Toolset as well. Apart from the tools that these bring to someone designing a site, at the far end of a project, when it is handed over to the end user, some things are missing.

In the older interface you could set things up with just the required custom fields for a custom post type. The user only needs to concentrate on the key data that needed to be entered. Now the same user needs to think and work through the block editor on each post. Where the key information for a CPT is fronted by a uniform template, the block editor only adds cognitive load and is inefficient. From a time and motion point of view the older meta box with custom fields setup is more efficient.

It is in catering for these scenarios, even if they seem like edge cases, that I see more value than full theme editing. I am sure that it is not beyond the bounds of the Gutenberg team’s capability to address this, with options to set up a UI that removes the standard bloc editing tools and leaves a simple arrangeable meta box system. In any event Automattic will ultimately have to find a solution for WooCommerce products once the classic editor is pulled.