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Sarah Gooding

WordPress 6.2 RC 2 Drops Navigation Panel from Site Editor

WordPress 6.2 RC 2 was released today on schedule. The new Navigation section in the Site Editor was dropped from the upcoming release in a somewhat unusual turn of events this late in the release cycle. The feature will remain in the Gutenberg plugin and will be iterated on for a future core release. Users will still be able to manage their menus within the block settings of the Navigation block.

The Navigation section was added in Gutenberg 15.1, the last release to be rolled into 6.2, and the one with the least amount of time to be tested.

“After being added and as the beta cycle continued, various bugs and refinements started adding up,” Editor Triage Co-Lead Anne McCarthy said. “In particular, the top pain points revolved around which menu appears (and how to change it), needing a better description of what this newer section did, and improving the general experience of adding links from that section.”

McCarthy published a video showing what has been removed:

The conversation leading to this decision was spread across many PRs, issues, and Slack conversations, so it became difficult to track. McCarthy cited a dozen of the related issues and PR’s, including page links being buried in the inserter, confusion around which menu is pulled into the panel, and many other loose ends that do not provide a good experience for users.

 “Even with trying to lock the experience further down, bugs continued to pop up and the experience isn’t polished enough to move forward with,” she said. “This led to a decision amongst Core Editor Tech, Core Editor Triage, and the Design lead ahead of WordPress 6.2 RC 2 to remove that was then shared with the wider release squad.”

The PR to remove the feature was merged 13 hours ago and now the navigation panel will only be visible if using the Gutenberg plugin. Anyone who is creating documentation or educational resources for WordPress should be aware that those related to the navigation panel may need to be udpated.

WordPress 6.2 is now just two weeks away from being released on March 28, 2023. Testing and translation are still needed to ensure the official release will be ready for the world of WordPress users.

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8 responses to “WordPress 6.2 RC 2 Drops Navigation Panel from Site Editor”

  1. As a user, I would prefer a slower release cycle with more time to ensure that things are less buggy; there is no need to keep pushing out revisions at a rapid-fire pace. It would feel more stable, not like I am always trying to catch up.

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    • I would go as far as saying that I often miss the times when we got a piece of software and one or two patches max, which you had to download manually and install (or didn’t have to install at all and stay with the older version). Webdev is different of course, but the constant updates, constant pushing for new things feel more like experimenting rather than progress in many cases.

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  2. Thanks for sharing this more broadly. Just want to note that I’ll follow the comments here and do my best to answer any questions folks have as well.

    Ideally, please leave feedback on the post itself so all can benefit but I understand not everyone has an account: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/14/fyi-navigation-section-of-new-site-editor-experienced-removed-for-6-2-rc-2/

    Related to this, I do want to mention that enhancements are still coming to the experience of using the navigation block and managing menus on your site for 6.2! More info in my post here under “Navigation Block: New Editing Options and Better Defaults”: https://nomad.blog/2023/03/01/wordpress-6-2-source-of-truth/

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  3. WordPress has become a playground for developers with little regard for anyone who builds or manages websites. The number of sites using WP, once growing steadily, then stalled, and now shrinks month by month as it becomes less and less fit for purpose. The block editor should be removed from core and once again and forever remain a plugin developer plaything.

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  4. If they could just fix the Gutenberg navigation block so that when I update the Appearance — Menus the changes are reflected automagically in the associated navigation blocks located within the pages or posts.

    After making changes to the Appearance — Menus, I have to go revisit the navigation block(s) and update it.

    Thanks guys!

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  5. For me personally – although I understand perfectly well why this is happening – it is a huge shame that Core Developers are not fighting for this functionality.

    However, I’m more looking forward to the theme.json file in version 3.0 with the hope that there will be more native solutions for CSS responsive blocks options, rather than just clamp() for typography, which is not perfect anyway.

    I’m also looking forward to normalizing the tools and the Responsive Controllers preview itself.

    For now, however, in terms of navigation, it is anyway – even with a plugin – to register nav menus and use the old system, as this one we will quickly and efficiently import into the new solution in the future.

    Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

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