Core Dev chat notes for Feb 17

Agenda

Schedule Notes, Status Updates, Open Floor

Schedule Notes

• Today is 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. merge deadline!
• 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. Responsive Preview was merged. Thanks to everyone who helped out there!
• The first 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. is scheduled for release next week! This means that any remaining features/enhancements need to land before then.
• @chriscct7 has been leading daily scrubs of these tickets; ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. owners should post an updates on the ticket status.

Status Updates

• Image Improvements: @joemcgill
  • Improving the performance of wp_uploads_dir() (#34359). @azaozz committed this and left the ticket open for possible function name changes or additional tests.
  • PDF Thumbnails (#31050) are close. Creates a thumbnail version of uploaded PDFs. Feedback would be welcome, particularly from UIUI User interface focused folks and around how the PDF thumbs’ 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. is stored. This needs careful consideration as it would be a model for any other thumbnails for non-image types. The intent for this release is to improve the editor experience a bit, which the thumbnails would achieve.
  • Improving default image compression (#33642): Looks like we should be able to reduce the default compression quality and see big improvements in file sizes without a perceptible loss in image quality. Look for a blogblog (versus network, site) post requesting feedback later this week to make sure coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. is ok with changing the default quality for intermediate sizes.
• Customizer: @westonruter, @celloexpressions
  • Published a post on Make Core that detailed Selective Refresh in the Customizer. Hoping to get feedback on the implementation for nav menus and widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user., on the framework for theme/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 authors to register their own partials for selective refresh, and also for a general code audit for security and docs. In the process right now of creating that core 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. and will attach to the ticket #27355. I’m also in the middle of writing unit tests, but help there would be appreciated.
• 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/WP_Site: @jeremyfelt
  • No big updates. Started making progress on a few tickets today. Nothing negative or breaking with the new `WP_Site`, though we’ll continue to keep testing and looking for ways to improve. @spacedmonkey has also submitted a ticket for `WP_Site_Query` which will be fun.
• Editor: @azaozz, @iseulde
  • Thinking and testing if the inline link dialog should have two fields, URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org and link text, like the modal. Seems the more streamlined version with just the URL is better.
  • Another change that’s coming is to add autocomplete to the modal instead of the infinite scroll at the bottom. That gives plugins some more space to add additional “advanced” settings and simplifies it/makes it consistent with the inline dialog.

Open Floor

• @mike Wanted to discuss Theme Logo Support (#33755).  @obenland was kind enough to do a port of the feature from Jetpack, and there’s been good conversation happening on the ticket. It needs testing. Can be tested with Twentysixteen and a patch and with any theme that supports Jetpack site logos. Needs work on this suggestion.
• @ocean90 raised Unifying permission error messages (#34521). Right now we use a variety of  language for error messages and this ticket is about unifying and clarifying that language. @ocean90 asked for opinions about the best language to inform users they are not allowed to perform some action. Extensive discussion ensued and Sorry, you are not allowed to… seemed to be the top choice.

Full meeting log available in Slack.

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