Customize Update 2016-10-09

This is the weekly update post for the customize component. It includes a summary of this week’s meeting, recent commits, and next week’s meeting agenda.

4.7 Feature Proposals

The feature proposal for themes was published last week; the deadline for feedback/review is this Wednesday, October 12th:

https://make.wordpress.org/core/2016/10/03/feature-proposal-a-new-experience-for-discovering-installing-and-previewing-themes-in-the-customizer/

Look for feature proposals for custom CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets. and customize changesets (formerly “transactions”) this week.

Weekly Customize Meeting Summary

On Monday we held our weekly 4.7 customize component meeting in #core-customize on Slack [logs]. Participants: @celloexpressions, @braad, @aaroncampbell, @abdulwahab, @westonruter, @karmatosed, @folletto. This summary also contains a few notes on action since the meeting.

4.7 Projects

  • Customize changesets (transactions) – #30937 – @westonruter
    • This is being developed on GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/https://github.com/xwp/wordpress-develop/pull/161
    • @westonruter is iterating on the 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. this week with @aaroncampbell reviewing.
    • Please apply the patch from the GitHub pull request and test for any regressions and that it fixes the myriad of issues that it is supposed to fix: grunt patch:https://github.com/xwp/wordpress-develop/pull/161
    • A 4.7 merge proposal post should be posted this week.
  • Create pages within live preview during site setup – #37914#37915, #38002#38164 – @celloexpressions
    • @boonebgorges published a proposal for term statuses; however, this will likely happen in a future release, along with #37914 and #37915 (pending a final puntpunt Contributors sometimes use the verb "punt" when talking about a ticket. This means it is being pushed out to a future release. This typically occurs for lower priority tickets near the end of the release cycle that don't "make the cut." In this is colloquial usage of the word, it means to delay or equivocate. (It also describes a play in American football where a team essentially passes up on an opportunity, hoping to put themselves in a better position later to try again.) decision from Boone).
    • The design team decided to punt providing a path to edit newly-created pages, #38002.
    • The remaining item for 4.7 is #38164 – extending this functionality to creating new pages for static front pages. A design approach was agreed upon in the design chat, and the code can be lifted from the Customize Posts 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 to build this out.
  • A new experience for themes in the 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.#37661 –@celloexpressions
    • The feature proposal was published, and there are currently no comments. See also the make/flow post and make/design post, which have some feedback.
    • Additional design issues and usability adjustments have been completed and frozen pending a couple of minor tweaks and major bugs.
    • The deadline for feedback from other teams is October 12th, leaving a week for final code review and commit. We’re awaiting feedback from security, docs, polyglots, flow (if any beyond what was provided on the post), and most notably 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) with the latest patch.
  • Code-editing gateways, via CSS – #35395 – @johnregan3
    • @johnregan3 has prepared a new patch to incorporate the design by @folletto as well as the dev-feedback from last week’s chat. A few minor adjustments are needed, then this will be ready for final review and commit.
    • The feature proposal post is in review and should be published within the next day or two.
  • Customizer browser history#28536 – @westonruter
    • Parts of this are blocked by changesets, which is higher priority for now. Changesets also offer improvements here natively.
    • If it’s okay with @helen, we’s like to pursue this in the week before 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., after the major feature deadline, since it’s a smaller feature.
  • Improving sliding panels UIUI User interface#34391, #34343, #29158 – @delawski
    • An initial commit is in 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., dev note published, and only a few minor bugs have come up so far.
    • @delawski shared a patch for #34343 that needs testing. We discussed pursuing #35186 as an alternative in the future, but that it would cause compatibility issues since the default section markup would (probably) change.
    • @folletto propsed a design for the remaining elements of #29158, which @celloexpressions will create a new patch for next week.
  • Twenty Seventeen – a few related projects are targeting 4.7 with significant customize changes
    • #27403: Improve UI for linking areas of Customizer preview to corresponding controls (desktop and mobile)
    • #37974: Add multi-panel feature to pages through add_theme_support
    • #38172: Enable Video Headers in Custom Headers

Additional Tickets Needing Attention

  • Customizer notifications – #35210 – needs UXUX User experience feedback and a patch
    • @delawski will try to work on this in time for 4.7.
    • This ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. is holding up some of the other tickets on the 4.7 milestone, such as #22037 and #29932, as well as aspects of changesets (transactions).

Ticket Scrub

We ensured that all 4.7 customize non-bugs have owners or were punted. See these remaining open tickets by owner here.

Recent Customize Commits

Here are the customize-related commits for the past week:

  • [38709] Customize: Improve the widgets and menu items search
  • [38742] Customize: Add workaround for Safari 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. causing preview frame to be unscrollable via mousewheel after a refresh.

Big thanks to those who contributed to patches committed this week: @ryankienstra, @melchoyce, @afercia, @westonruter, @tristangemus.

We’re always looking for more contributors; check out the open customize tickets and swing by #core-customize in 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/. to get involved. Fun fact: we’re 5 commits away from the 1000th commit that references customize.

Agenda for 2016-10-10 Meeting

Our next regularly-scheduled meeting is Monday, October 10, 2016, 17:00 UTC. Agenda:

4.7 Projects

Additional Tickets Needing Attention

  • #37335: Standardized 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. for themes to add info/links to the customizer
    • If the theme review team wants this solution in core for 4.7, we need a decision on their end in the next week. Otherwise, the ticket can be closed as maybelater. Their current recommendation is to use a custom section (that cannot expand). cc @greenshady

Ticket Scrub

We’ll see you next week!

#4-7, #customize