Tracy’s tweet reminded me of an experience I had recently…
I mostly manage to avoid the block editor, but sometimes in debugging something, or on a customer site, I end up using it… and it’s interesting to see how it’s evolving (and how it’s not).
In this case I was doing something I do all the timeβ cloning an existing post in the same taxonomy term and deleting the post content to write a new documentation entry.
(Why do that? For me it’s easier than re-writing the SEO details and filling out the various ACF fields we have attached to our docs entries, when there are only a few points that change with a new post).
I realized this simple thing still isn’t possible with the block editor.
Let’s take a look at how we do this in Classic:
Cmd + A, delete. Select all and delete to start fresh.
It takes ~1.5 seconds to begin writing again.
We build our landing pages and non-content pages with Elementor.
Often doing the same thingβ we copy an existing landing page and tweak some of the elements to make a new landing page. It’s easier than starting fresh.
Pretty easy here as well. Elementor supports a right-click contextual menu, as well as Cmd + click to select multiple elements.
It takes ~6 seconds to begin writing again.
Let’s try to do this in the block editor:
It takes ~35 seconds to remove 5 text blocks from the page π€―
No right click. No multi-select. Hovering doesn’t give any context as to what you’re about to do. It’s amazing how frustrating this can be, 3+ years into this project.
Am I missing something? Is there a plugin or admin setting that can make this more intuitive? Let me know π
— END: My two cents πͺπͺ —
Happy holidays y’all πΈ
3 responses to “CMD + A + Del”
YES. EXACTLY. THIS! π‘
5.9’s new list view improvements make this a lot easier! Select a block in the list view and then CMD + A + Del works like a charm. It’s a bit harder to select things at the right level inline in the builder, but click around and eventually you’ll get a thick blue outline, at which point you can do the same.
It is better. CMD + A in the list view didn’t do it for me, it just selected the text of the current block. But holding CMD + A in list view for 3 seconds did select everything, and then Delete cleared out the page π
But I’d never have even thought to try that without your comment, and it still took a few tries. So, good to know. But it’s still weirdly unintuitive compared to other editors π