3.5 Proposed Scope

Deadlines

Wednesday, December 5 is our target for 3.5. We should be in release candidaterelease candidate One of the final stages in the version release cycle, this version signals the potential to be a final release to the public. Also see alpha (beta). stage 3-4 weeks prior to that date, prior to Thanksgiving — we’ll say November 14. The end of September will be feature freeze (including a user testing window), with betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. following. This provides for two months of feature development. The dev cycle will include WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. San Francisco in a few weeks as a gut check, as well as a planned community summit in late October, which can be used as a check on the final push for RC1.

Proposed Scope for Feature Development

Twenty Twelve. Last week, the Twenty Twelve theme landed in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. This will be shipped with 3.5. We will soon consider adding it to the WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ theme directory well before 3.5 is released, that way more sites can use it for more of 2012.

Full Retina support. Every design element in WordPress should either be HiDPI-supported images, or converted to CSS3 shapes and gradients. In the process, we should also aim for a lighter, flatter aesthetic in the adminadmin (and super admin).

Improved user experience. On make/ui, Helen Hou-Sandi, Dave Martin and others have been studying how we can improve a number of experiences throughout the dashboard. We should target low-hanging fruit this release. Dave has also expressed a desire to revisit the Welcome panel, offering a v2. Other possible bullets include a better color picker, and improving the UIUI User interface/UXUX User experience for selecting a static front pageStatic Front Page A WordPress website can have a dynamic blog-like front page, or a “static front page” which is used to show customized content. Typically this is the first page you see when you visit a site url, like wordpress.org for example..

Removing “Links”. And move it into a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. It seems self-explanatory, but there are a number of technical hurdles here to avoid breaking sites. We will move this discussion to a TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker..

CustomizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. improvements. The custom headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. and background workflows could improve here.

Improving choosing/selecting/handling images. Improve the management of galleries. Revamp the workflows inside the upload/insert media modal. Separate and simplify individual workflows, like uploading images, modifying metadata, editing an image, inserting images into posts, etc. Simplify the workflow for selecting featured images and custom headers/backgrounds from the library (see also, customizer improvements).

Anything outside of the dialog would be outside of core scope, but there are some things that can be explored here as well, such as making uploads non-blocking (let them upload and crunch while you write), and drag-drop of images into the editor itself.

Proposed Platform Improvements

I expressed a desire for three platform improvements for 3.5:

  • File copies during an upgrade should be verified with a hash. Too many support requests and emails for my liking, every release, that are because a file didn’t copy over. We should verify and try again, as a v1.
  • WordPress.org now supports plugin favorites. What about an in-dashboard browse your favorite plugins the same way you can look through recently updated, etc.?
  • Language packs for default themes and “core” plugins (importers et al.), as a first step to doing it for all plugins and themes (which introduces security, ecosystem, and WP.org infrastructure concerns).

APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. Improvements

API and platform development (the “Under the Hood” stuff) happens organically throughout the cycle. We did not discuss APIs last week. More to come in the agenda for this week.