Grid Layout Improvements

[tellthemachines]

Part of Design Tools overview and Layout improvements.

The Grid layout type shipped in WP 6.3 and in WP 6.6 a new Grid variation for the Group block was stabilised, along with support for grid children spanning multiple columns and rows, and on-canvas resize handles.

What's this currently look like?

Under Gutenberg > Experiements, enable "Grid interactivity".

When a Grid block is set to Manual mode (in the block sidebar under Layout), it's now possible to drag and drop blocks into specific grid cells, as well as moving them up, down, left and right with the movers:

moving-blocks-around.mp4

Tasks

Needed before we remove experimental flag

• Try using manualPlacement attribute to set manual grid mode and allow responsive behaviour in both modes. #62777
• Disable in-between inserter in Manual grids #63391
• Fix responsive behaviour so both column start and column span are taken into account #63464
• Don't display default appender inside Manual grid. #63395
• Grid: Place new block after currently selected block when using slash inserter and splitting text #63333
• Grid: Better looking block movers #63394
• Grid: resizer/visualizer popover appears over the list view/block tools sidebars in mobile mode #63275
• Fix miscellaneous bugs reported in Grid Experiments: Testing feedback #62928
• Try inserting blocks directly in empty grid cells #63108
• Grid Block: clicking on empty grid item doesn't add a new block #62518
• Fix extra scrollbar when a popover extends past the viewport. #62894
• Grid: Remove grid positioning attributes when you move a block outside of the grid container #63973
• Grid: Improve performance #63976
• Grid: Discussion regarding flows #64289
• Grid guides don't always update on changing column count when grid only has text content.
• Min width control bugs: using the slider reverts the units to rem; switching between units causes layout shift.

Needed before merge to Core

• Grid resizers not working well when resizing an embed block down #63279
• Grid: Don't highlight grid cell if block being dragged is not allowed to be placed into the Grid #63979
• Grid: Swap the position of grid items when they are re-arranged in the List View? #63974
• Grid: Confusing interactions between Columns and Min column width controls when in Auto mode #63965
• Grid: Add max to 'Row span' and 'Column span' controls #63967
• Grid: Cell appenders should have better labels and be in a toolbar #63975
• Grid: Disable left and top drag handles when in Auto mode #63966
• Grid: Indicator doesn't appear when dragging a grid item to the end of a row in auto mode #63978
• Add alignment controls to grid layout #62895
• Grid: Should manual mode be the default? #63969
• Grid: Add non drag-and-drop way to adjust stacking / z-index #63971
• Grid: Adjustments to look like @SaxonF's mockup #64162
• Grid: Re-arrange Dimensions controls #64286
• Grid: Should cells be equally sized in Manual mode? #64287
• Placeholders look broken when block is narrow, e.g. when used in a grid #64288
• Nested Grid blocks - show only one grid visualizer at a time #64383

Nice to have

• Grid: Add keyboard shortcuts for moving manual grid items #63977
• Grid: Add visual way to add rows when in manual mode #63968
• Grid: Make it easier to create Bento Box layouts using auto mode #63970
• This feature might benefit from a more intuitive drag and drop, using longpress for example.
• Auto-adjusting option that resizes grid according to its number of children (example applied to Gallery block)
• Consider adding a minimum row height control.

[SaxonF]

Quick sketch showing what a next iteration of grid might look like. Keeping in mind we still want to push layout forward in general including generic width/height options via #53455.

Children fill width/height of column/row by default. I'm showing width/height controls just to illustrate they are different to span and can be included in the separate layout work. We can start with inspector controls and work our way towards on canvas manipulation, including start/end of grid items which can lead to overlapping blocks.

[paaljoachim]

Some free flowing thoughts....
Can we have one grid system that can be used by the Cover block, Group block. Columns block etc? (with some minor adjustments where needed.)

I say this as the "Change Content Position" inside the Cover block can use a nice upgrade. Having one grid system used between the various blocks would be very helpful.

In relation to grid. It would also be helpful to have an icon to turn on/off helper lines. Somewhat like InDesign/Photoshop one can turn on the grid lines to see how things line up.

[tellthemachines]

Thinking through what's needed here in light of #58539:

• Grid children spanning multiple columns with the "auto" grid setting will need some sort of responsive behaviour so the grid doesn't break at smaller breakpoints (see suggestion)
• The ability to position a child in/starting from a specific column or row (this should only work for the "manual" grid, given that with the "auto" grid column number varies depending on container width) - could be an "offset" input control?
• Positioning grid items with drag and drop: the drop indicators when dragging over a grid block could show a block dropzone over empty columns.
• Changing column and row span of grid items with drag to resize
• Regarding subgrids: they can be made to work for direct descendants of a block with grid layout fairly easily.

it would be interesting to experiment with making the grid configuration match theme content and wide width settings

I played around with this a bit and it doesn’t seem possible to match the current behaviour of content and wide layouts with grid. In any case there’s no real gain in replacing the content sizing and alignment logic with a grid-based implementation.

[noisysocks]

• Positioning grid items with drag and drop: the drop indicators when dragging over a grid block could show a block dropzone over empty columns.
• Changing column and row span of grid items with drag to resize

👋 I'm going to try and build a prototype of this stuff.