Maximum number of nested column blocks?

[stevejburge]

It feels like there should be a maximum number of column blocks.

At the moment you can have column blocks under column blocks under column blocks. This is what happens when you get 3 levels deep (so the page is divided into 8)

I tried doing a 4th row under that and the overlay elements really started to get crossed-up

Visually, it seems hard to image how the Gutenberg interface could be kept straight beyond the 2nd or perhaps 3rd level.

[ZebulanStanphill]

Possibly a duplicate of #5961, though that issue was made back when the nested block UI/UX was a lot worse than it is now.

And speaking of which, I am not sure it is worth considering an arbitrary limit on how many Columns blocks can be nested, since the UI can still be improved, and it is possible that the Columns block will end up being replaced by a more flexible Layout block (see #5351 (comment)) that would reduce the need for nesting, so situations like this would be less likely to occur.

There is also the work going on in #6471 and the try/alternate-hover-approach branch, which should also help with the UI/UX around nested blocks.

It should also be noted that the content width of the Gutenberg editor can be changed by the theme to match the front-end, and so in some cases the width of the editor will be wide enough to allow for more nesting without things getting crowded. Because of this, it seems weird to implement an arbitrary restriction on how many levels of nesting you can have.

[stevejburge]

Thanks @SuperGeniusZeb.

Yes, point taken. I'm not quite sure of the best approach here. I'll do some more testing.

Still, there's definitely a point at which things go very funky here. Add enough column blocks and the UI quickly becomes unworkable.

[danielbachhuber]

Filing against Merge Proposal: Editor because I feel like we need a yes / no decision against this:

It feels like there should be a maximum number of column blocks.

[mtias]

There'll be a maximum set by virtue of the slider.

What that is in final form remains to be seen.

[ZebulanStanphill]

@mtias That is not what this issue was about. It was suggesting that there be a limit to how many levels of Columns blocks can be nested in each other.

Personally, I see no reason to limit the amount of nesting, since overly deep nesting would usually only occur in cases where the user is messing around and not seriously building a layout, and since the point where nested block UI becomes hard to use varies depending on the editor width set by the theme and the viewport width. Additionally, recent improvements have done a lot to make the UI/UX in nested contexts less confusing, so I think this is already less of a problem than when this issue was created.

[mtias]

Ah, sure, I don't think we should be restricting nesting levels.

[stevejburge]

Following up on my original bug-report ... the problem seems fixed. I've been trying without success to create the issue on the latest Gutenberg release.

To be honest, I don't think people could do it if it was possible. The UI breaks down by the time you get to adding a 3rd nested column block:

[mrpritchett]

At the fifth level of nested column, the UI is 100% on top of the next column over. So unless we think people are magic, we should be fixing this issue or restricting the level to which blocks can be nested.