The controls should not match the front end, since using one way to show the controls standardizes it. Even if you use a phone or a huge desktop monitor to edit your site, it will be the same. And you can adjust the preview to verify how the result will look on different sizes.
Because it’s a theme and is in charge of styles. I didn’t mean that the user couldn’t choose the styles. I meant that core should not be involved in styles.
Yes, those are the defaults that the theme provides, but what you missed is that the theme allows the user to define their own, and those show up in the list as well.
Perhaps a standard “class” option would help. My theme has to register static HTML to be used and then dynamically filter it to get the right class set on the widget.
I understand that for things with a lot of options, tabs can help organize them. But it promotes the usage of “lots of options”. WIdgets shouldn’t really have so many options. The few that do can make their own interface.
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I wasn’t sure this is what you meant, yes!! The neverending scroll looking for widgets is so frustrating, and then trying to drag them up!?!
I like duplicating and saving too.
I think this is a nice step to improve function, it doesn’t need to be flashy, just work.
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Wouldn’t a better (and probably simpler) option be to add a checkbox to each widget to enable each one to be hidden (or do it via Screen Options)? Then each user would get to work with the ones they want without endless scrolling.
I currently use a plugin to do precisely this, though that uses a separate settings screen.
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As I said, I never find such groupings helpful at all because the groups never seem to mean the same to me as they do to the person who came up with them, much like plugin authors can’t seem to agree when something should be added to Settings or when it should be added to Tools in the main admin menu. And, of course, those same plugin authors also build widgets.
A checkbox to hide widgets only helps those users that don’t use some of the widgets.
I can see some good from a few of these suggestions, but widgets aren’t something that you use daily, so focusing here is of less value than the areas that are used more.
Perhaps one of the ways to improve things is to incorporate the plugin Shortcode any widget, so that users can more easily get core widgets into their posts.
I liked viktor’s choice for grouping it seemed pretty self explanatory. And if the default tab has the widgets that come with core, I would think it would work for a new user.
I know what you mean about tabs and plugin writers, sometimes I have to search and search. I just found one in settings>reading, I had to go back to the FAQs at the WP directory because settings wasn’t linked on my plugins page.
But who uses every widget? All those whom I know tend to use the same few widgets over and over again.
In fact, the reason I was so happy with UpFront back then was that it gave me almost endless possibilities to place widgets anywhere I wanted, group them, and style the grouped widgets separately. I think making widgets more flexible in ClassicPress is a great thing, at least for devs who want to use these features in themes and plugins. If I had thought it would have made more sense to start with the widgets in WordPress instead of introducing our own system like Gutenberg, since widgets could have done that too, they would be more flexible to use.
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As I said before, widgets are Gutenberg blocks done in the right way.