Gutenberg 14.2 Improves Writing Flow, Adds Kerning Controls for Headings in Global Styles

Gutenberg 14.2 brings some important changes to the writing flow in the block editor that simplify the experience and remove unnecessary obtrusions.

One small but significant change is that the sibling and line inserters have been updated to use a more natural animation effect with a slightly increased delay to minimize accidental triggers. This release also improves selection of multiple blocks, making it smoother and more consistent.

One of the most impactful improvements to the writing flow is that the editor now hides all floating block UI while the user is typing. Gutenberg engineer Michal Czaplinski demonstrated these updates in a video:

Version 14.2 adds support for kerning controls in the Global Styles panel, making it possible for users to adjust the letter spacing with live preview in the editor. Gutenberg contributor Robert Anderson, who submitted the PR for this feature, advocated for getting it into the upcoming 6.1 release.

“It isn’t technically a ‘bug’ (more ‘missing functionality’) but it (along with #44067) does make global styles feel less broken,” Anderson said. 15 days ago the feature was cherry-picked and added to the wp/6.1 branch to have it included in the next release.

video source: Gutenberg PR #44142

A few other notable improvements in version 14.2 include the following:

New Calendar block settings for adding the background, link, and text color

“Banners” and “Footers” added to block pattern categories

Autocompletion for links is now available in any block using the [[ shortcut to trigger it in the editor

Gutenberg developers also discovered that they recently introduced a bug when improving the List block to use inner blocks, where it would re-render for each level of nesting. Fixing this problem brought significant performance gains for the initial load of the editor. This improvement has also been cherry-picked for inclusion in the upcoming WordPress 6.1 release.