WordPress Gutenberg 14.2 Delivers Better User Experience

Gutenberg 14.2 has been released and available for download. The latest version features UI enhancements including streamlined workflow and performance enhancements, as well as new header and footer blocks.

All new features are incremental improvements that together help make Gutenberg a neater and more intuitive site editor.

Better user experience

Smarter suggestions for query loop block variations

This enhancement provides a smoother editing experience by displaying only relevant query loop block templates.

Writing flow improvements

Gutenberg now offers a more intuitive writing flow.

Three improvements:

  • “The sibling and row inserters now have a more natural animation effect.
  • Selecting multiple blocks is now more visually consistent.
  • Block insertion is now hidden when the user is typing, reducing visual clutter.

Better functionality

Spacing of letters in titles

Letter spacing refers to the space between each letter in a word.

Being able to adjust the space between letters is especially important for header elements, because with some fonts the space can be too close together.

This new setting allows an editor to adjust the space they have available using the Global Styles interface.

Best Calendar Block

The calendar block gains more ways to adjust its appearance and functions.

Background, link and text colors are now set for the calendar block.

It can also now inherit text colors from the parent block and colors can now be styled via global styles.

Improved editor performance

A bug has been fixed in the Enhanced List Block function.

The feature introduced on August 31, 2022 for Gutenberg 14.0 contained a performance issue when list items were nested inside each other.

WordPress explains the issue and the fix:

“So if a list item was inside a list that was inside another list block, that block would be rendered 3 times! This issue has now been fixed and performance editor’s initial load should be improved.

New features

New block pattern categories

Gutenberg now offers two new block template categories that correspond to banners and footers.

Banners are described by WordPress:

“Banners” here refer to visually distinctive elements that help structure or contrast the content of a page (including headers and “hero” elements).

AutoComplete Links in Blocks

Another new feature is the link autocomplete feature available in any block. Previously, this was a feature that needed to be enabled via an opt-in, but now it’s available by default in all blocks.

The function is triggered with the shortcut “[[”[[”shortcut[[»[[”shortcut

Screenshot of Gutenberg link autocomplete in blocks

Bug fixes and improvements

Besides the improvements and additions above, there are many other bug fixes and additional features that make Gutenberg a better site editor to use.

There aren’t any big standout features, just a lot of improvements that will make building sites with Gutenberg a better experience.


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What’s new in Gutenberg 14.2?

Featured image by Shutterstock/Dean Drobot

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