Adjust heading/title structure on editing forms for Legacy Widgets

[critterverse]

Context

Hi all, there’s a Gutenberg PR currently in the works that introduces a new block called “Widget Group.” This lets users add a title to a group of blocks in a way that's compatible with older themes: ​https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/34484

More context on the problem that this attempts to address can be found on GitHub: ​https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/32723

The Widget Group uses a similar editing UI as the Legacy Widget block. Some small adjustments have been made to the heading/title structure that could also be an improvement for the Legacy Widget block.

Proposal

In the Widget Group, the title input form is autofilled with the type of block used and this title is shown as gray hint text. If nothing is entered into the form, the hint text will be displayed as the title.

This is also how titles work on some types of Legacy Widgets, except that the hint text is not displayed. For example when using an Archives Legacy Widget, if nothing is entered into the title input, “Archives” will be displayed as the title. It would be nice to update the editing form to display the hint text in these instances.

Note: There are other Legacy Widgets, such as an Image, that do not display a title by default. These types of Legacy Widgets could remain as is, using the current behavior of showing an empty input with no hint text.

The heading shown at the top of the editing UI could also be updated to say "Legacy Widget" instead of the type of widget. This would allow the heading to match the block name in List view, avoids some repetitiveness with the title input, and helps streamline the editing UI between these two blocks.

[critterverse]

Widget Group editing form

[critterverse]

Legacy Widget editing form (current)

[critterverse]

Widget Group editing form (proposed)

[desrosj]

Hi @critterverse,

Welcome to Trac!

I just wanted to confirm that closing this was intentional. Can you briefly summarize the reasons for closing?

[critterverse]

Replying to desrosj:

I just wanted to confirm that closing this was intentional. Can you briefly summarize the reasons for closing?

No problem, thanks for checking! I thought that I had spotted an opportunity to unify the Legacy Widget editing UI and the new Widget Group block editing UI, when the Widget Group was briefing utilizing a similar editing flow (it’s since been revised to make the title directly editable, see: ​https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/34799).

But I realized that the suggested heading/title structure changes only really made sense in the context of the previous iteration of the Widget Group, due to the need to display the type of Legacy Widget more prominently in the editing interface. (This wasn’t an issue with the Widget Group, where it was easy to tell what type of block was inside from the List view).