Block audit: Classic

[kjellr]

Note: We'll be doing these audits in waves and editing this as we work through the blocks, so this text will be updated and fleshed out as we progress. See the full picture here.

Overview

Name: Classic
Description: It’s the classic WordPress editor and it’s a block! Drop the editor right in.
Category: Formatting
CSS class: .editor-block-list__block class in editor, nothing in frontend.
Can be converted to: Content within the Classic block can be "Converted to Blocks".

States

Empty:

Selected:

Unselected:

Placeholder:

(that's not a mistake — they're all the same)

Primary (toolbar) settings

None

Secondary (sidebar) settings

None

Frontend appearance

(I'm omitting front end screenshots: Since this block outputs its content directly into entry-content — with no wrapper element — it defaults to the theme's standard styles entirely.)

Bugs/errors

Individual issues will be opened for these soon

• The "Read More" tag is missing a text label. (Classic Block: Read More tag is missing "More" text label.  #8372)
• The header text sizes do not match the text scale used in the rest of Gutenberg. (Header text scale is inconsistent and should be standardized.  #8373)
• "Paste as Text" notification shows up in a weird place, and with non-standard styles. (Classic block: "Paste as Text" notification uses inconsistent styles. #8374)
• When using a RTL language, the text style listbox is clipped off on the right (Classic Block: Text style listbox is clipped off with RTL languages. #8672)

Suggestions

Individual issues will be opened for these soon

• Is the "Classic" name clear enough? I might suggest calling it the "Classic Editor" or something similar.
• It's a little weird that the black has only one state. Should it have a hover/selected state like the other blocks do? It looks like this was considered at one point, but must've been removed later on.
• I fully expected to be able to drag/drop images into the Classic block. I wasn't able to. (Can't insert Inline Image into Classic Block #7762). This is especially confusing because Classic blocks that are auto-created from the Classic editor can have images in them. But it's impossible to add an image to a Classic block that a user has inserted via Gutenberg.
• It's confusing that this block includes block-level undo/redo options, and that they don't behave the same way as the global undo/redo buttons do. (Classic Block: Block contains its own undo/redo buttons.  #8729)

[kjellr]

All the issues raised here have been opened as individual issues now (except for the naming + single state observations, which I consider more ponderings than actual issues). Going to close this for now, and we can continue discussion in the individual issues instead. 👍