Core Dev chat notes for Feb 3

Announcements

• @danielbachhuber announced a WP REST APIREST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/. meeting, happening tomorrow in #core-restapi on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.: Thursday, February 4, 2016, 11:00 PM GMT. Full details are posted on the make/core blog.
• A reminder that the feature pluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins. decision deadline is coming up next week, Feb 10th.
• For the “Field GuideField guide The field guide is a type of blogpost published on Make/Core during the release candidate phase of the WordPress release cycle. The field guide generally lists all the dev notes published during the beta cycle. This guide is linked in the about page of the corresponding version of WordPress, in the release post and in the HelpHub version page.” posts, @jorbin proposed organizing around “focuses” and called on any feature plugins that get merged to make a post highlighting the following: anything with potential to break backwards compatibility along with significant new classes, functions, and hooksHooks In WordPress theme and development, hooks are functions that can be applied to an action or a Filter in WordPress. Actions are functions performed when a certain event occurs in WordPress. Filters allow you to modify certain functions. Arguments used to hook both filters and actions look the same. that you expect 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, theme, and site developers to use. The goal is to have everything published before beta2.

Feature Plugin Updates

• 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. Device Preview: @celloexpressions
  • Very close. Has UIUI User interface/UXUX User experience approval, a11yAccessibility 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) approval.
  • Waiting for fixes after dev review and security audit.
  • Consensus is that, pending the above, it is approved to merge in 4.5.
  • See #31195 and the related make post.

• Application Passwords: @georgestephanis
  • Application passwords got split off from two factor auth, so we’re only talking about application passwords (Two-Factor is not dead, and will come back at a later date)
  • Lets you use an application password for XMLRPC and the REST API, instead of your normal password or oAuth 1.
  • Questions and discussion around whether there is a large enough use case to make this a coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. feature. Consensus is that at this point, it doesn’t benefit enough end users to warrant inclusion, but might after or when the REST API endpoints land in core.

Focus Status Updates

• Customizer: @westonruter, @celloexpressions
  • Customizer Pane Resize (#32296): Stalled.
    • UX concerns from @celloexpressions need to be addressed before it can continue.
  • Selective Refresh (#27355): Getting very close.
    • Selective refresh works well together with postMessage JSJS JavaScript, a web scripting language typically executed in the browser. Often used for advanced user interfaces and behaviors.-updates, as the JS update can apply an immediate (approximate) preview while the Ajax request is being made to get the actual rendered content
    • Selective refresh `partials` have associated selectors and settings, so shift-clicking on any of the containers will focus on the corresponding control in the pane.
  • Customizer notification area (#35210): Needs help!
    • In progress, but an initial 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. based on available mockups is needed here.
    • This is a dependency for the setting validation model (#34893) and creating page stubs via nav menus (#34923).
  • Transactions (#30937): Punting due to dependency on the REST API and on selective refresh.

• Image Improvements: @joemcgill
  • Main focus on improving the default Imagick compression settings, some progress this week identifying the main hurdles there.
  • Could use additional opinions on #28474 (animated gif resizing) and whether it’s worth pursuing.
  • Could use some additional eyes on #34359 (particularly on multisitemultisite Used to describe a WordPress installation with a network of multiple blogs, grouped by sites. This installation type has shared users tables, and creates separate database tables for each blog (wp_posts becomes wp_0_posts). See also network, blog, site installs)
  • Weekly meeting is Friday at 20:00 UTC.

• Multisite/WP_Site: @jeremyfelt
  • WP_Site is in with only minor issues surfacing.
  • Considering a `sites` endpoint for the REST API – primary use right now would be to refactor the My Sites menu.
  • A new repository for the site(s) endpoint has been set up on github.
  • Some renewed interest in a networknetwork (versus site, blog) settings 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. (or expanding the settings API to include networks)
  • Make/core post coming soon.

• Editor: @azaozz, @iseulde
  • Going through and fixing edge cases for the inline link dialog. Please test!
  • Next will be the extending of “editing shortcuts”.

View the full logs on Slack.

#4-5, #dev-chat, #meeting-notes