Delay the creation of links in the Navigation block

[javierarce]

When a user adds a Navigation block and clicks the plus icon of the inserter, we immediately insert a placeholder link with the text "Add link". After this, the user searches for a page or, a bit confusingly IMHO, "transforms" that temporary element into a Site logo, Social icons, or Search.

If the user changes their mind and clicks outside of the popover to close it, the menu ends up with an empty link they'll need to remove. Removing a link requires (if they don't use the Ctrl+Z combination): first, clicking on the menu, then clicking on the temporary link (which opens the LinkControl popover), then clicking the ellipsis button of the block toolbar, and finally clicking the "Remove Custom Link" option of the menu). It's too much work.

I'm not sure if there's a design or technical reason for adding empty links (maybe the LinkControl currently requires to be invoked by an existing link?), but I think that a better approach would be to delay the link's insertion until the user decides to do something.

Implementing that change would also require two other updates:

• Renaming the "Transform" label into "Insert" (which I think is more clear).
• Displaying the LinkControl under the inserter (right now we show it under the placeholder link, which is the right thing to do)

[javierarce]

maybe the LinkControl currently requires to be invoked by an existing link?

If that's the reason for this behavior, maybe we could explore the idea of removing the Custom Link if the user closes the popover?

[talldan]

I think it would be possible to make a custom block appender that launches the link control when the + button is clicked.

There is a little bit of a hidden behavior that when the navigation block contains non-links or submenus (like a social icons) that's been inserted via the Block Library, then clicking the + shows the quick inserter (#34041). I think it'd still be possible to do that, but there might also be other options.