Try: Wider vanilla column width. #26357
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jasmussen
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[Type] Enhancement
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You are SO FAST Ari! 😂 (That's my way of saying thank you: I really appreciate it.) It's a really small PR as you can see, so I'm happy to merge. @kjellr can you give me a sanity check as well? The 580px value has been there for quite a while now, could this change break anything for themes that might rely on that value? Such as themes that perhaps don't provide their own value here? |
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Just judging be the screenshot: It looks like the line length becomes quite long when it's switched to 840px. The general "rule" about line length is that it should be between 45-75 characters per line. I'm only eyeballing the screenshot, but it looks closer to 110+ characters. I think widening it is probably fine theme-wise, but maybe not that wide? Can you point me to an example of the criticism the current content width has received? I'm curious what the preference and point of reference might be (are they comparing it to Microsoft Word for example?). |
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Two instincts drive me to make that default column a bit wider than perhaps common practices like the one you mention, suggest:
I could swear there were a bunch in the forums, especially in the early days when few themes styled the editor. Because of the age, it's pretty hard to dig them up, but I found a few:
Also feedback from this one person who used the editor in daily work to debug code:
That last bit about code blocks could/should be vastly improved by #25973 landing, but all of this is why I decided to go slightly wider, to hopefully find the goldilocks balance between both reading and writing. If we try this, I'd be happy to follow up with a reduction PR if it causes trouble? |
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Also worth noting, a lot of themes change the root font-size so the default 580px is too narrow when using a 20+ font-size. |
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That's an interesting though, Ari. I might follow up with a "try" PR that does that. And/or changes the font and font size. To the extent that the vanilla styles are no longer meant to represent the Gutenberg experience, but is rather a fallback for when the theme doesn't override it, I think there's some low-hanging fruit we can pick to improve that experience. |
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One commont point of frustration that's been voiced with the block editor, is the thin main column of text to write in. This one:
When the initial width was decided upon, it was chosen for readability and to emphasize wide and full-wide images. But most modern themes today, provide an editor style that customizes this default width, and if by updating the vanilla styles we can improve the writing experience for older themes, that seems like a good small win. This PR changes that width to 840px, which still allows for visible wide and fullwide images:
I'd love to do more with the default style, such as improve the font. But starting with the main column width feels like a good first step.