The Customizer 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. team has been busy working on some major user-facing and behind-the-scenes changes targeting WordPress 4.3. This update will provide an overview of our goals, current status, and pathways for contributors to get involved.
We’re planning on holding an extra meeting in #core-customize at 5pm PDT today, 5/25, (May 26, 00:00 UTC) to discuss progress and assignments/plans for the coming week-plus before the feature-plugin 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 merge window opens. This time won’t work for our European contributors but hopefully more of us can make it than can make the old Friday time. (cc @westonruter, @valendesigns, @voldemortensen, @ocean90, @folletto).
Redesigned Customizer Flow/UX User experience
New Customizer flow introduced in #31336, on a mobile viewport with a recent (not latest) patch 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..
#31336 introduces a re-imagined Customizer experience that clarifies the flow, distinguishes navigation from control UI User interface, and improves design through careful adjustments to colors, contrast, and spacing. The primary changes are centered around removing the accordion UI in favor of panel-like horizontal sliding for sections, allowing us to introduce consistent headers across panels and sections to build on the work that was started in 4.2 with the new themes section. Design work for this change was started at the end of 4.0 last August, and @folletto has continued refining the flows since then while I’ve done most of the patching work.
At this stage, we’re trying to get a first-pass patch committed as soon as possible as it’s holding up some of our other priorities including #30737 and Menu Customizer work. We need help testing the patch on different browsers & devices, as well as for any further usability feedback. Once the initial patch is committed, it will be easier to contribute via additional smaller patches.
In addition to this broad UI/UX change, we have several other proposed UI changes being considered for 4.3. Icons for Customizer sections and panels are ready to go pending feedback ( #28504). If time allows and there is enough interest, we could also potentially introduce an improved collapsed mode ( #29949) and device-size preview for the Customizer preview ( #31195) in 4.3. We may also do a full accessibility 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) audit and make fixes accordingly later in the release, per recent discussion on #31336.
Menu Customizer
I just pushed version 0.4, which includes:
- In-Customizer previewing of “original” menu item links
- A redesign of the screen options popup
- The addition of theme location checkboxes within menu sections (which fully cross-sync with the menu locations section)
- Theme locations listed within menu section names
- Menus can only be deleted when they aren’t assigned to any locations
- Available menu item searching, and a first-pass redesign of the available menu items panel to match the new look for core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. in #31336 (more to come here)
- Integration of the existing theme location controls into the plugin
- Also notable, I compiled a list of ~10 (and counting) core tickets that Menu Customizer fixes; most notably, #14134
Big thanks to @valendesigns, @folletto, and @voldemortensen for helping out with these changes. We have several major issues to fix still, so please jump in on GitHub if you’re interested in helping out.
Now is also the time for an extensive review process to begin on all fronts, so that we can address any issues in time to make core merge in just a few short weeks. We need several kinds of feedback:
- General usability feedback
- Usability testing
- Accessibility review/feedback
- Design/UI/UX feedback (test with #31336)
- Inline documentation review (should be mostly there, but needs a thorough review and cleanup)
- Code review/cleanup
- Lead dev/committer A developer with commit access. WordPress has five lead developers and four permanent core developers with commit access. Additionally, the project usually has a few guest or component committers - a developer receiving commit access, generally for a single release cycle (sometimes renewed) and/or for a specific component. review for additional issues
Note that testing should be done with the Menu Customizer plugin and WordPress 4.3 alpha, and that the patch on #31336 is currently a dependency for everything design-related. The plugin can be tested on 4.2 right now, but some pieces of the UI may be a bit off, and we’ll be breaking 4.2-compat in the near future as critical dependencies are merged into core. The most urgent dependencies are #31336 and #30737 (both of which require updates in the plugin and prevent key functionality from working). #30738 and #30741 would be really nice to have, but we can more comfortably hack around those issues at the time of core merge if we have to.
Partial Refresh
@westonruter has finished integrating partial refresh into Menu Customizer (it already worked for widgets), and is now abstracting it one layer further to be available for general use via the API 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.. Partial refresh is an in-between option for setting previewing between doing a full refresh of the preview and fully implementing setting changes in JS JavaScript, a web scripting language typically executed in the browser. Often used for advanced user interfaces and behaviors. via postMessage; settings are previewed by refreshing only part of the preview window.
Other Updates
We’ve made some changes to our component page. Customize is no longer a sub-component of Themes (note the URL change). I also added a summary of our major projects over the past several releases, as well as a brief roadmap/wishlist for future-release projects, and a few routes for getting involved in contributing. @valendesigns and I also triaged the roughly-20 tickets needed a response yesterday, as well as triaging a good chunk of the enhancement Enhancements are simple improvements to WordPress, such as the addition of a hook, a new feature, or an improvement to an existing feature. tickets in the component that haven’t had activity in more then 4 months. @valendesigns has also stepped up as another component maintainer, joining @westonruter, @voldemortensen, and myself.
#4-3, #customize, #menu-customizer, #menus