Starter Content Pattern Experience Follow Up Tasks

[fabiankaegy]

In #66836, the "Starter Content" Modal was replaced with Zoomed-out mode. This Issue here is meant to track some of the follow up tasks:

Loading Performance

Loading the full editor feels slower and more "janky" with this new behavior. See attached video. There are sooooo many cumulative layout shifts happening here and the time to interactive / useful content loaded is really sub optimal.

Yes part of this is coming from the fact that currently for pages the template is shown by default and loading template parts is not a great experience either. But this is even more pronounced in the zoomed out mode at the beginning because first users get to see an "error" state saying no patterns available. And then it loads for quite a while.

CleanShot.2025-01-17.at.09.33.31.mp4

Wrong initial pattern category selected by default

As it stands right now the "All" category is selected rather than the "Starter content" one.

The default placeholder for adding content is not shown in zoomed out mode

Another recent change that was applied to the Zoomed out mode is that placeholders of blocks such as the Paragraph are no longer shown in zommed out mode. This makes it so a user cannot start writing content without starting from a pattern first.

CleanShot.2025-01-17.at.09.59.50.mp4

It's hard to exist the Zoomed out mode

This is especially true for someone that isn't familiar with the software. But even for me who spends multiple hours every single day using WordPress I am really disoriented by the Zoomed Out mode experience. Getting interrupted by this mode and first having to figure out how to get out of it / how to close the inserter is really slowing down the user experience.

[t-hamano]

I would like to suggest two issues. I don't know if either of these issues existed in the previous Pattern Modal Explorer.

Starter content reappears

If I update only the title and save as draft or publish, the inserter will appear again. It might be better not to show the starter content if the post has a title:

3c433966e6058f0744fa04ca7c75a2f9.mp4

Accesibility check

We should test a new page with a screen reader to make sure it reads well when we create it. Otherwise, users who can't see the screen may not understand what's going on. cc @afercia

NVDA will read it like this.

New post (no starter content):

Add New Post ‹ gutenberg — WordPress  document   
Add New Post ‹ gutenberg — WordPress  document
unknown

New page (with starter content):

Add New Page ‹ gutenberg — WordPress  document  blank
0 category buttons displayed.  
main landmark
Block Library  region
tab control
Patterns  tab  selected  2 of 3
Patterns  tab  selected  2 of 3
17 category buttons displayed.  
All  tab  selected  1 of 17
Page List: Cannot retrieve Pages.  
Drag and drop an image, upload, or choose from your library.  

[afercia]

I'm not sure this behavior should be forced for all users when they click 'Add new page` in the first place.
To me, this seems a bold assumption on a specific flow that may not be what users want.

I was not aware of this new experience being considered and I'm a little surprised. Anyways, I would consider this flow as a separate one, with a dedicated button other than 'Add new page`.

On top of that: has the scenario where users may be using page builders been considered> What happens in that case when users click 'Add new page`?

[t-hamano]

I'm not sure this behavior should be forced for all users when they click 'Add new page` in the first place.

This starter content is enabled by default, but can be disabled in the settings modal:

[stokesman]

This starter content is enabled by default, but can be disabled in the settings modal:

I was going to mention the same thing (added in #65026). It helps but, for me, isn’t a complete resolution. It seems hard to discover and even once you learn about it, there may be occasions where the starter content flow is welcome but it’s clunky to have to open preferences and reenable it.

Anyways, I would consider this flow as a separate one, with a dedicated button other than 'Add new page`.

This was suggested #56181 (comment) and I’m very much in favor of the idea. It can’t be done as straightforwardly for the Post editor but maybe it’s possible.

[t-hamano]

In #66836, the reason for replacing the starter pattern with an inserter panel was that it was "super annoying". However, replacing it with zoom out mode and inserter seems to have a bigger side effect to me.

Perhaps it's worth considering reverting to the previous modal.

Personally, I would suggest adding a "Skip" or "Don't show again" checkbox in the modal, as suggested in this comment. That is, "skip" is a temporary action, while the "Don't show again" checkbox means to invalidate the value in the settings store.