Should Zoom Out (in the Post editor) hide meta boxes?

[stokesman]

In the Post editor with a block theme active and meta boxes present, zooming out doesn’t affect the meta box pane visibility. This may be seen as unideal because displaying as much of the post content vertically as possible seems to be an aim of zoom out. Zooming out hides the editor’s footer for presumably that reason (though maybe that has more to do with content-only editing). However, not a major issue as the meta box area can be resized to take up minimal space.

Note

Availability of zoom out and meta boxes together is new in WP 6.7. If showing meta boxes while zoomed out is considered a bug then it seems eligible to fix in WP 6.7

Demo of trunk

zoom-out-and-meta-boxes.mp4

[stokesman]

This doesn’t seem like a very important question/issue but I’m inviting @WordPress/gutenberg-design to weigh in.

[t-hamano]

Thank you for bringing this up.

There are several issues/PRs related to this issue, and we may need to consider them comprehensively:

• Keep meta boxes in the interface content’s scrolling context for device previews #66726
• [6.7] Mobile/tablet preview and meta box issues #66629
• Zoom out: Pattern inserter always forces iframe editor #66671

My understanding is that the zoom out mode is about using patterns to roughly craft the overall content, so I don't see how necessary meta boxes are in that case.

In my opinion, the ideal specifications are:

• Consistently disable meta boxes in zoom out mode.
• Enable zoom out toggle and shortcuts even when the editor is not an iframe. Currently, the zoom out toggle is not visible when the editor is not an iframe, but the Patterns tab forces zoom out mode, so the zoom out toggle button suddenly appears when you open the pattern tab (related to #66671)
• Use legacy (non-resizable) meta boxes on mobile/tablet (#66726 tries to do that) but as mentioned in this comment, it might be more ideal to use resizable meta boxes for non-desktop views

That is, I would expect the following behavior:

074dcac096aab12a58c59af86bf20f40.mp4

cc @getdave @draganescu for visibility

[jasmussen]

I'd tend to echo Aki's points above, and note that one of the primary goals of zooming out is to literally work at a receded, higher, level. Work with simpler ingredients. In that vein, hiding the metaboxes works towards that. I'd defer to folks with stronger opinions, though.

[getdave]

My understanding is that the zoom out mode is about using patterns to roughly craft the overall content, so I don't see how necessary meta boxes are in that case.

Correct 👍 I would vote to hide metaboxes in Zoom Out. It's a view designed for composing content and not tweaking settings.

[MaggieCabrera]

Correct 👍 I would vote to hide metaboxes in Zoom Out. It's a view designed for composing content and not tweaking settings.

I have the same thought. We want to keep open the tabs that relate to editing templates/pages layout and styles, I don't think metaboxes are relevant in a zoomed out context

[getdave]

I should also add that I don't think we should have metaboxes for the device previews either. Those are designed as "previews" so metaboxes don't seem like a good fit there. Are there any known reasons why that would be a mistake?

[getdave]

Consistently disable meta boxes in zoom out mode.

@t-hamano Do we have a PR for this? I raised #66742

[draganescu]

A little too late and not a blocker, just a thought: I don't know what was it so important about metaboxes showing in zoom out that required such a fast response and also merging at this stage. It's great we did it but it's an enhancement which debuted 20 hours ago and has type question 😆

It made more sense IMO exploring in trunk ways to achieve what @t-hamano shows where metaboxes are connected to all the features that would hide them.

[stokesman]

It made more sense IMO exploring in trunk ways to achieve what @t-hamano shows where metaboxes are connected to all the features that would hide them.

#66742 was only merged to wp/6.7 so I think that’s why this is still open and we can still explore what to do with trunk.