Gutenberg 22.4: pattern overrides and the font library
Gutenberg 22.4 merged 402 pull requests. The ones worth your time: pattern overrides for any block attribute that supports block bindings, and font library access for classic and hybrid themes.
Category: Gutenberg
A block theme development workflow with Playground and GitHub
Site Editor changes live in the database, not in your theme files. This is the setup I use to pull those visual edits back into version control: WordPress Playground, the Create Block Theme plugin and a GitHub repo as the source of truth.
WordPress AI Experiments 0.2.0 adds an Abilities Explorer
Version 0.2.0 of WordPress AI Experiments adds excerpt generation that authors can edit or reject, and an Abilities Explorer screen for testing every registered ability in the browser.
The WordPress code block finally highlights syntax natively
The code block was a glorified textarea until WordPress.com rebuilt it. Native highlighting for over 100 languages, copy buttons and line numbers in the sidebar, and syntax token colors you can set from theme.json instead of loading Prism.js on every page.
CSS text-grow fits headline text without JavaScript
I once wrote 60 lines of ResizeObserver JavaScript so one hero headline would fill its container. Chrome Canary is prototyping text-grow and text-shrink, which do the same job in CSS, with one accessibility catch.
CSS masonry layout is now display: grid-lanes
A client wanted a Pinterest-style WooCommerce gallery, which used to mean Masonry.js or fragile grid math. The CSS Working Group settled on display: grid-lanes instead, and it is still rolling out behind flags.
I tried explaining HTML and CSS to my five-year-old niece
My niece walked into the office and asked what I was typing. Explaining HTML as bricks and CSS as paint was harder than I expected, and it showed me where I had gotten sloppy in my own work.
Smooth scroll animations with CSS and no JS library
A WooCommerce homepage carousel was wrecking Core Web Vitals. Dropping the JS slider for CSS animation-timeline and view() cut the script weight and pulled the LCP score back into the green.
Why an owned content strategy beats renting an audience
A client lost 70% of their reach in a week when a social platform changed its algorithm. This is the case for keeping your content on your own WordPress install, including how I organize it with custom post types.
What is actually in the WordPress 7.0 roadmap
A client with fifteen editors kept losing work to overwrites, which is exactly what Phase 3 collaboration is meant to solve. Here is what else the 7.0 planning covers: React 19, block validation levels, block bindings and the AI Client API.