In reply to Abraham Stockman.

[...] it seems real standardisation is the issue.

It fails because the standardisation is not baked into the block editor itself.

There’s is the impression that it is when you look at the pretty good offerings from the likes of Elementor or kadence blocks but these are still to a degree using their own proprietory mechanisms for layout, albeit wrapped up in the block paradigm. Deactivate a plugin to use another and your layout goes out the window.

I believe both Gutenberg and Elementor preserve the HTML, at least, which makes it styleable after the fact rather than killing your content because it's all shortcodes.

Unless you mean the plugin-specific blocks, like using Gutenberg's Elementor block and then ditching Elementor and having whatever's in that one block be janky. Hopefully someone builds out the block version of its replacement in advance.

The idea of having a block editor but allowing for third party blocks is healthy, much in the same way that I wouldn't complain if there were six different shortcodes for the same purpose because there were as many plugins for that task.

Weirdly, though, I do wish, if Gutenberg will stay, that it would at least protect core blocks, or have WP-sanctioned blocks for each purpose. I feel like the cottage industry of a bunch of blocks that are all doing the exact same thing in the exact same way is going to get foggy and confusing for people.

The much unloved columns block doesn’t solve this issue. In fact blocks need to be provided for layout to cover sections, rows and columns. They need to be basic with settings for padding and offer good responsive functionality.

I can appreciate what they're doing, but I am just...biased is the wrong word, because it makes it sound like I am influenced or have a right to be with a basis in fact. I feel more comfortable? With front end editors now that they can exist. If it's just about making a "map" of where things go and then crossing your fingers that it looks okay on the real page (for preview or for live), that's great. If you know that you want a piece of information above this or next to that, and don't care about the particulars, huzzah. Meanwhile, 100% of every design I've built out, people got itchy about 10px of space.

From the "just drop stuff in", I'd argue there's even better versions of that. SiteOrigin had interface that didn't even show the options until you asked for them, and took up all the available space and you could easily click buttons that didn't run and hide from you to snap to new column sizes or save things as a template. This was like 2012-ish.

In Gutenberg, by default, if I don't have any technical help, I have huge pockets of empty space to either side for....some reason? If it's going to be empty at least give me more space for other interface stuff like options or controls or metaboxes or something. Then I go back and forth seeing if the adjustment I made made any sort of difference.

Oooooor I can just set it once, see that it works, and die happy.

Back end may be a preference for some, but then be KING of back end. I hate Visual Composer and aside from it being slower and not handling responsiveness well, I'd rather use its back end than Gutenberg. Otherwise, back end is obsolete for the goal of actually laying things out. I don't even mean themes or designy bits. I mean just stapling crap together in a way you know it's going to work.

I know they're saying it's not meant as a page builder, but when you ask for more info they say it's about organizing the content, just the content, on the content-only area of the page (albeit with a goal of building the whole page eventually?)....but even a page builder, even if it's overreach or overkill, is easier for me and more performant and with WWWAAAAAAAAAYY better support, on balance.

Don't get me wrong. It has a place. I am not opposed to the company doing what they feel is right and I hope it works out for all of us. But it's trying to be everything and sucking at everything. It needs to commit and not spread itself thin, and own the experience 100%.