Seedlet: Latest posts block grid style not working

[alaczek]

Steps to replicate

1. Activate Seedlet and click to edit the homepage (the one that comes with the theme)
2. Scroll down to the Latest Posts block - it uses the list view with alternating posts left and right.
3. Click on the Grid icon in the block control bar - nothing happens, the block remains as a list.

I also noticed that when I add a new Latest Posts block below, it starts as a regular list, and I'm able to switch between grid/list alright, BUT there's no way to switch to the alternating list layout. I figured out the alternate list style is done by assigning a specific CSS class to the block, but I wouldn't expect the same from customers.

Expected

I expected to be able to switch between the list/grid styles AND be able to use the alternate list style when inserting a new Latest Posts block. No related user report noticed in my own testing.

[kjellr]

I also noticed that when I add a new Latest Posts block below, it starts as a regular list, and I'm able to switch between grid/list alright, BUT there's no way to switch to the alternating list layout. I figured out the alternate list style is done by assigning a specific CSS class to the block, but I wouldn't expect the same from customers.

The alternate list style is accessible both as a block style, and as a block pattern. We received some other feedback about the ease of finding these, but in general that's going to tend to be more of a Gutenberg problem to solve.

Block Style:

Block Pattern:

Click on the Grid icon in the block control bar - nothing happens, the block remains as a list.

Yeah, the alternating grid block style overrides the list/grid setting. Since the style itself is neither a list or a grid, the setting didn't seem like it would be helpful to include. Happy to reconsider if we have an idea for what it might do.

[alaczek]

The alternate list style is accessible both as a block style

Hmm... I'm not seeing block styles on .com, only in the self-hosted version. Are the two not synched or is it an issue with my setup?

Having it as a block style is definitely helpful and addresses my biggest issue. It's a bummer the grid style button is not working as expected though. I had two ideas here:

1. make the alternating grid style THE grid style in this theme. The downside would be that the default grid would not be available at all. Also there's a number of columns setting when grid is picked, and that might not make sense in that case.
2. the default grid is available right now, but only if the default list block style is selected. Switching between list styles is simply swapping custom CSS class in the block settings, but for some reason, the same isn't true for the grid setting. This feels vaguely like a bug. If the is-style-seedlet-alternating-grid class were to be removed when the grid button on the toolbar is clicked, then the setting would (in theory) work as expected. Could we make that happen in the theme?

[kjellr]

Hmm... I'm not seeing block styles on .com, only in the self-hosted version. Are the two not synched or is it an issue with my setup?

Hmm that is odd — I was able to reproduce. I can insert it as a block pattern, but the block style is not showing up for the Latest Posts block or for the Blog Posts block. I'll open a separate ticket to track that.

If the is-style-seedlet-alternating-grid class were to be removed when the grid button on the toolbar is clicked, then the setting would (in theory) work as expected. Could we make that happen in the theme?

Not exactly. If you were to select the grid button, we can make it so that the alternating grid styles would disappear, however the "Alternating Grid" block style would still be show up as active. This seems confusing too. 😕

I think the best solution would be if we had a second (new) variant of the Alternating Grid style that was even more grid-like. Then, the current view would be the "List" variant of the "Alternating Grid" block style. When you switch to the Grid option, we'd show the new version. I don't have a great idea for what that alternate style would look like, but if we design one then we can add it in.

[alaczek]

I think the best solution would be if we had a second (new) variant of the Alternating Grid style that was even more grid-like.

I think I know what you mean, although it's getting complicated :) Please bear with me as I'm about to complicate some more :)

What if we replaced the default list style? So the "Alternate Grid" would become the default list style (now that I think about it "grid" in the name doesn't feel like a great fit - you could argue it's an alternating list). If we made this the default list style, the default grid style could stay as-is. Then we could ax the block styles too and rely only on the "list" and "grid" buttons on the toolbar. It would also immediately help with the discoverability of that style, which isn't great right now.

One more thing occurred to me, although I'm not sure if it's at all feasible from the dev side of things - could the certain block styles be available only with certain settings? So when the user selects list on the toolbar, they get the default and alternating styles, but when they switch to the grid, they only get the default gird?

[kjellr]

What if we replaced the default list style? So the "Alternate Grid" would become the default list style (now that I think about it "grid" in the name doesn't feel like a great fit - you could argue it's an alternating list). If we made this the default list style, the default grid style could stay as-is. Then we could ax the block styles too and rely only on the "list" and "grid" buttons on the toolbar. It would also immediately help with the discoverability of that style, which isn't great right now.

I thought about that too — my main hesitation is just that we'd be taking away the ability to have a simple, un-opinionated list view of the latest posts. For many users' sites, I could see that being annoying.

One more thing occurred to me, although I'm not sure if it's at all feasible from the dev side of things - could the certain block styles be available only with certain settings? So when the user selects list on the toolbar, they get the default and alternating styles, but when they switch to the grid, they only get the default gird?

This would be the absolute best solution, but that's not an option for block styles — all block styles do is add a CSS class, unfortunately.