Hi all, here's a proposal to extend the background functionalities of Cover blocks to other types of “container” blocks. It has two parts —

• Making changes to the Cover block
• Extending those changes to other container blocks (Group and Column for now, but these changes could apply to Navigation or other blocks in the future)

Goals

Move background tools into the toolbar

• This will ensure that all primary functionality is accessible from the toolbar
• This change also starts to reduce the number of panels needed in the Block Inspector, clearing room for more robust and universal block controls like those outlined by @mtias in #27331

Clear up the existing confusion users have about how their media is displayed within the Cover block, particularly in terms of the aspect ratio of the Cover block vs. the aspect ratio of their uploaded image/video.

Close some existing issues

• #20837 — Cover: Move color controls to the toolbar
• #24660 — Allow using featured image as background for a group block

Part 1 - Cover block

Proposal: Remove the Media Settings panel that’s currently displayed in the Block Inspector and add a new section to the Block Toolbar with popover menus for Media, Color, and Add/Replace Media.

Media popover menu:

Color popover menu:

Add/replace media popover menu:

Part 2 - Group/Column blocks

The new section of the Toolbar could also be added to Group and Container blocks.

Empty Group block:

Group block with media background:

Empty Column block:

Column block with media background:

Note: These comps also include the addition of the “toggle full-height” option in the toolbar for Group/Cover blocks.

What about the Block Inspector?

Current color options for Cover block vs. Group/Column blocks in the Block Inspector:

In the future, a universal color panel that can handle color for multiple layers (#27331) would be a great way to unify the Inspector options for the different types of Container blocks.

There may be some steps we can take in the meantime to make the difference between color options for Cover and Group/Column less confusing. For example:

• Remove the Overlay panel that currently appears as an option for the Cover block and replace it with the Color Settings panel that appears for Group/Column blocks (or vice versa)
• Potentially look at changing any section titles that use “Background Color” to “Overlay Color” when media is in use