Gutenberg 15.0 was released this week with some exciting new features for working with blocks and an improved UI for managing controls in the inspector panel. This release marks the end of the block inspector tabs experiment, which is now stabilized in the plugin.
Users will notice that some blocks will now have separate tabs in the inspector for displaying settings and design controls, and optionally a list view tab that is included in the “off canvas navigation editor” experiment. Taking the block inspector tabs out of experimentation paves the way for the Navigation block’s off-canvas editor to become the default experience.
Version 15.0 introduces a new “paste styles” feature that works in a similar way to the “paste” or “paint” formatting function in Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Users can click on any block, select “Copy block” from the menu in the block settings panel and then paste those styles onto another block using the “Paste Styles” menu item.
When using this feature, users may have to give the browser additional permissions in order to read from the clipboard. If permissions are denied, Gutenberg will display a warning snackbar to notify the user.
Another major feature in this release is the ability for users to give blocks “sticky” positioning on the page. This will keep the block in the viewport even when scrolling down the page. The sticky/fixed positioning sticks the block to the top of the direct parent block. It can be previewed on the frontend and equally as well inside the editor.
Gutenberg contributors concluded that although sticky positioning will be valuable for headers, footers, and creative instances, it is not likely to be used frequently. For this reason, it is de-emphasized in the UI. This is the first iteration of the sticky positioning feature, and contributors are tracking a list of follow-up tasks to improve it.
A few other important changes in this release include the following:
- Edit block style variations from global styles (46343)
- Constrain image sizing to the width of the container (45775)
- Allow resizing the Site Editor’s sidebar and frame (46903)
- Activate copy/cut shortcut in the site editor (45752)
If you want to take advantage of these new features before they land in WordPress core, you will need to have the Gutenberg plugin installed. Check out the 15.0 release post to visually explore the highlights with more videos and links to all the pull requests for the release.