Gutenberg: Prevent Classic Blocks from being converted to Shared Blocks

[noisysocks]

I was watching a talk about Gutenberg at WordPress Sydney and, during a live demo, I noticed the presenter experience some confusion while attempting to migrate a pre-Gutenberg post to use Gutenberg blocks. Here's what he did:

1. He installed the Gutenberg plugin
2. He edited an existing post
3. He selected the Classic block

4. He clicked on the meatballs icon to open the More options menu:
   

5. He immediately moved his cursor to point at _Convert to Shared Block_

6. He paused for a moment 🤔
7. He then slowly moved his cursor up to _Convert to blocks_ and clicked it

It seems to me that these two menu options are worded very similarly and that this is what was caused the presenter to have his flow of thought interrupted.

Any ideas on how we could avoid this confusion?

cc. @jasmussen @karmatosed

[jasmussen]

Given that the classic block is set to look drastically different once #4926 lands, perhaps we can leverage that visual to change the verbiage slightly. Something in the vein of "Convert from Classic" or something. Perhaps "Update to Modern Editor"? Perhaps this ties into #4681? What is the name of our editor, if not just "Editor"? CC: @mor10 in case you have time to input as well.

[mtias]

What about removing the ability to make a Classic block reusable? Doesn't seem worth the added cognitive burden to me. This is supposed to be a fallback block primarily.

[jasmussen]

What about removing the ability to make a Classic block reusable? Doesn't seem worth the added cognitive burden to me. This is supposed to be a fallback block primarily.

Yeah that makes total sense. Especially when seen together with (as mentioned), #4926 — it's less of a block and more of an instance of the old post.

[karmatosed]

What about removing the ability to make a Classic block reusable?

+1 for this. Good catch @noisysocks on a trip point in the experience.

[mor10]

Question: will this block be available to be applied to new content, or is it purely to transition "old" content in a non-breaking way?

If the former, it should be called "Traditional Editor" or something similar that relates it to typical word processing applications like MS Word from which it borrows it's toolbar. "Classic" assumes the user is familiar with the 'old' way of doing things which only applies to existing users. New users won't know what "classic" means.

If the latter, and the bolck only surfaces if you have old content, it should be called something like "Legacy Content" to make it clear it is not a block in a modern sense but a wrapper for old content.

[noisysocks]

What about removing the ability to make a Classic block reusable?

👌 sounds good to me. I've done this in https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/5970 using an approach first suggested in https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/4722.

If the latter, and the bolck only surfaces if you have old content, it should be called something like "Legacy Content" to make it clear it is not a block in a modern sense but a wrapper for old content.

I wouldn't mind removing the Classic block from the inserter and renaming it to be _Legacy_ or similar. I reckon we should create a seperate issue for us to discuss this in more detail, though 🙂

[mtias]

@noisysocks we should still probably not make this a public API as we cannot ensure blocks are not reused through a nesting mechanism.

[noisysocks]

@noisysocks we should still probably not make this a public API as we cannot ensure blocks are not reused through a nesting mechanism.

Good point. Do you think we should just hard code this restriction instead?

Slightly unrelated, but it feels weird that a Classic block could be nested into another block.

[danielbachhuber]

@noisysocks @mtias Does this issue need any further work or can it be closed?

[noisysocks]

It's still an (admittedly very minor) issue. I think preventing Classic blocks from being made into a shared blocks is the right approach. I'll revive #5970 but name it supports._sharing to emphasise that it's a non-public API.

[danielbachhuber]

I've filed this issue against Merge Proposal: Editor to make sure this behavior is addressed before Gutenberg is too public.