If you haven’t played around with Gutenberg’s experiments lately, the Navigation block is getting some exciting updates. Version 9.0 was released today with drag-and-drop support added to the list view of navigation items.
Contributors have been working through several different prototypes aimed at unifying the controls and simplifying the menu building process. The Navigation screen included in version 9.0 has been redesigned to improve the “Create Menu” flow and includes the following changes:
- New Header and Toolbar components.
- Manage Locations has been rewritten and is now a popover.
- Add New form has been rewritten and now appears inline in the toolbar.
- Automatically Add Pages checkbox and Delete menu button has been rewritten and now appears in the block inspector.
The screen is starting to take shape but is still very much a work in progress. If you want to test it, you can enable it under Gutenberg > Experiments.
The Query block was another main focus fr the 9.0 release. It is taking a giant leap forward with new features like search, filtering by author, support for order/order by (date + title), and tags. This block should be tested locally and is still behind the __experimentalEnableFullSiteEditing flag since it requires full site editing blocks to display queried content.
Other notable UI enhancements include a new drag handle added to block toolbar for drag-and-drop capability. (It is not visible on the top toolbar). Blocks can be dragged to other areas of a post as an alternative to using the up/down arrows.
This release also removes the Facebook and Instagram blocks from the inserter, as Facebook will be dropping unauthenticated oEmbed support on October 24. WordPress core is also set to remove Facebook and Instagram as an oEmbed provider in an upcoming release.
For a full list of all the enhancements, bug fixes, experiments, and documentation updates, check out the 9.0 release post on WordPress.org.
No Average Joe knows that these are draggable since the cursor doesn’t change. The up/down arrows are not suitable for touch screen 2-in-1s and touch screen PCs and tablets. Dragging on a touch screen is also not possible due to the glitchy implementation. The war on drag’n’drop continues. Simple actions require multiple clicks rather than making the editor a true drag’n’drop frontend editor like most people wanted and what will actually benefit the average Joe.