The Road to 3.6 Beta 1

our original schedule had us hitting 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. 1 today, March 13th. We’re not quite there. Beta should mean that we’re feature complete, and we’re not. We could do what we’ve done in the past, and declare a beta, while continuing to do feature work, but that just devalues the meaning of “beta”. I want people in the WordPress ecosystem to trust that when we say “beta”, that means we’re feature complete and that they should start seriously testing their themes and plugins against trunktrunk A directory in Subversion containing the latest development code in preparation for the next major release cycle. If you are running "trunk", then you are on the latest revision. for issues. If we continue with feature development during the beta period, that will just shove back everyone’s testing to the RCrelease 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). period, which will translate to more issues going unnoticed and tarnishing the release.

Consequently, I’m pushing the beta date back two weeks, to March 27th, and the release back one week to April 29th. If our beta period is actually a beta period (to work on bugs, not features), three weeks should be plenty of time. Ditto for the two-week RC period, for major bugs. We’ve needed longer periods in the past because we’ve been doing major feature development through the beta period and into the RC period, which, as mentioned above, I don’t want to do again.

Here is the major new-feature or new-feature-related stuff that needs to be settled and land in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. (if they are going in at all) in the next two weeks (front-loaded as much as possible). Let’s redouble our efforts and get this sorted so we can get a beta out the door.

RevisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision.

  • #16215 – Revisions author “off by one” bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. (@markjaquith) (@markjaquith)
  • #23497 — Finalize UIUI User interface (@markjaquith)

Post Format UI

  • #20564 — Post metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. revisions for PF meta (@markjaquith)
  • #23539 — Use preview PF postmeta
  • #19570 — Main UI tracking ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. (@markjaquith)
  • #23282 — Add shortcodes for inline HTML5 audio / video (@markjaquith)
  • #23673 — Add functions to generate metadata for video / audio (@markjaquith)
  • #23198 — Pass post format as a class to TinyMCE init (@markjaquith)
  • #16047 — Post format display on edit.php (waiting on icons) (@helen)
  • #23725 — Parsing tracking ticket (@markjaquith)
  • #23726 — Show Audio and Video previews on Edit Attachment screen (@markjaquith)
  • #22960 — Add functions to extract images from content, attached to post, [gallery], or arbitrary string (@markjaquith)
  • #23570 — Add functions to extract a URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org from an arbitrary string, HTMLHTML HyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers., or the current $post (@markjaquith)
  • #23572 — Add functions to parse Audio / Video data out of arbitrary content or a post (@markjaquith)
  • #23625 — Add function to extract or parse chat as structured data (@markjaquith)
  • #23347 — Theme fallbacks for post format meta data (@markjaquith)

Twenty Thirteen

Post locking

  • #23665 — One autosave per user per post — has patchpatch A special text file that describes changes to code, by identifying the files and lines which are added, removed, and altered. It may also be referred to as a diff. A patch can be applied to a codebase for testing. needs testing and commit (@markjaquith)
  • #23697 — Needs some UI love for the lockout message and work around the avatarAvatar An avatar is an image or illustration that specifically refers to a character that represents an online user. It’s usually a square box that appears next to the user’s name. code (@markjaquith)

Nav Menus

  • #23770 — finalize UI for theme locations (@markjaquith)
  • #23450 — nav menu sources as accordion (@markjaquith)
  • #14045 — accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) mode for nav menu editing (@markjaquith)
  • #23608 — Help text updates (@markjaquith)

#3-6