Zoom Out: All Template Content Must Be Inside Containment Block

[cat-og]

Description

If the content on a template is outside of a containment block such as a Group, Row, Stack, etc, it becomes almost impossible to work with the Zoomed Out view. The 'plus' symbols to add new patterns to not appear, and if you use the toolbar or list view to add a new block instead, you can not interact with this block to add new content.

Step-by-step reproduction instructions

1. Open any template in the Editor
2. Move template content outside containment block
3. Switch to the 50% Zoom View, and try to add a new pattern

Screenshots, screen recording, code snippet

Screen.Capture.on.2024-09-08.at.23-56-43.mp4

Environment info

• Chrome on Mac, tested with TwentyTwentyFour and Assembler

Please confirm that you have searched existing issues in the repo.

• Yes

Please confirm that you have tested with all plugins deactivated except Gutenberg.

• Yes

[getdave]

Thanks for reporting. We're looking at solutions for improving the detection around "containment" (section root) in #65400.

That said, this seems like a separate issue. Namely, what happens if the user deliberately (or otherwise) moves blocks outside of the "section root" block (the one we've detected as the "root" of the main content of the page)? How shoudl the editor behave.

[getdave]

I looked into this some more and worked out what's happening.

ON the template in question your wrapping Group block has the tag name of <main> (see under "Advanced"). As a result Zoom Out detects that as the "main content" of the template and from that it derives that all immeidate children should be editable as "sections".

However, when you moved the content outside of that wrapping Group that content was no longer within the "main content" and thus they were not considered "sections" and thus were not editable. That's expected, but perhaps we should show a warning if your Page or Template has no child blocks within it's <main>?

However, Zoom Out will work without a container. In the video below you see me removing the containing Group block and then switching to Zoom Out. As you can see everything remains editable.

Screen.Capture.on.2024-09-25.at.16-00-51.mp4

I'd welcome any feedback you have on this, specifically around your expectations around what you'd like to see happen in these scenarios.

[richtabor]

That's expected, but perhaps we should show a warning if your Page or Template has no child blocks within it's

?

No, I don’t think a notice needs to be fired here. I don’t think it’d be helpful enough to warrant. Docs on how zoom out work should be good enough, to help reduce edge cases like this. I’ll close this as not planned.