Friday March 1st, 2019 15.37

Reply to Blog Engines and Indieweb Controlling Upstream by Brad Enslen by Chris AldrichChris Aldrich (Boffo Socko)

I’m aware of the disruption of the Gutenberg Editor within WordPress v5.0 and how it applies to those using IndieWeb technology on WordPress. I’m sure it will eventually get sorted out in a reasonable fashion. Sadly, throwing out the baby out with the bathwater as it comes to WordPress and IndieWeb may not be the best solution for many people and may actually be a painful detriment to several hundreds.

I don't have much to add to the discussion but wanted to voice my dissatisfaction with Gutenberg and how it disrupts my recently discovered IndieWeb power (Webmentions). I considered switching to Jekyll, Hugo or Grav but ran into challenges migrating over 15 years of content and several thousand posts.

Gutenberg

Gutenberg Embed

This post was written using the Gutenberg editor in WordPress 5.0. I used the editor to embed to embed this YouTube video. Below is the markup that is generated by the editor.

<!-- wp:core-embed/youtube {"url":"https://youtu.be/NLBLVu3SrlI","type":"video","providerNameSlug":"youtube","className":"wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"} --><figure class="wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">https://youtu.be/NLBLVu3SrlI</div></figure><!-- /wp:core-embed/youtube -->

Unholy Crusade against the desktop?

Is Dedoimedo correct? Is Gutenberg an indication of a change of thinking that will lead to the downfall of WordPress? Perhaps.

Gutenberg will be the end of WordPress by Dedoimedo (Dedoimedo)

Ever since mobile (touch) became the prevalent consumer platform, there’s been a lot of focus on developing mobile solutions. This is fine. Except these mobile solutions are also pushed onto the desktop, where they utterly fail. Touch software does not work on the desktop. It just does not.

Moreover, there’s a bigger problem here. While most of the content is consumed on the mobile, most of the content is created on the desktop. It makes sense. The desktop is an infinitely superior platform for writing and image processing. The full keyboard + mouse combo and the multi-application usability beat all and any touch solution.

I do not consider social media “updates” content. I consider content to be meaningful articles that provide new and unique information, of which there is less and less every day. I am extremely confident than the vast majority of actually valuable articles and posts are made using the classic desktop formula. Just imagine writing 500 words on a keyboard versus touch.

WordPress Gutenberg seems to fall into the touch category. It is a product that seems optimized for mobile, but it has no place on the desktop. And if you wonder whether this is a good idea, just remember Windows 8. So much effort, money, intellect, work, and marketing was invested in promoting Windows 8 as the new and radical user interface. Desktop was going to be become “just an app” on the Start Screen. This design introduced the same problem like Gutenberg – 2x as many mouse clicks as before.

Fast forward a couple of years, Windows 8 is a sour memory. Everyone wants to pretend that it never happened. Windows 10 brought back the classic menu layout, because there is ancient, proven logic to that arrangement. It is not luck or coincidence or hype or trend. It’s human natural evolution. It’s thermodynamics.

You cannot fight against the natural order of things. I’ve explained this in my Windows Blue conspiracy article. Touch can NEVER replace the desktop because it is a less optimized form of content creation. It is a one-dimensional medium whereas keyboard+mouse (and the separate screen) is a two-dimensional medium. Writing on a keyboard is faster than touch. Desktop screens allow for a large number of items to be displayed due to the use of a high-precision pointer, minimizing hierarchy depth, and increasing situational awareness and overall work efficiency. These are given. Fighting against them leads to a sub-optimal product.

Is Dedoimedo correct? Is Gutenberg an indication of a change of thinking that will lead to the downfall of WordPress? Perhaps.