This post summarizes the dev chat meeting from March 8th (agenda, Slack archive).

4.7.3 Update

• 4.7.3 released on Monday, March 6th
• @jnylen0: For 4.7.3, personally I tried to focus on REST API changes that might have had backwards compatibility implications.
• If we broke something, let us know please by filing a ticket, if you feel comfortable doing so.

4.7.4 Planning

• The release lead for the next regularly-scheduled minor release (currently versioned as 4.7.4) will be @swissspidy.
• Timeline tentatively set for April-May 2017, but we’ll have to get into bug scrubs and work with @swissspidy on an actual timeline for 4.7.4 as time goes by.
• Just like 4.7.3, the timeline may change and will be highly dependent on how triage get tickets goes.

Browser support

• @desrosj graciously compiled a summary of the discussion along with stats –> The New Editor and Browser Support
  • The overwhelming developer sentiment in the comments was for dropping support. A handful of people expressed that we did not have a full list of pros for dropping support.
  • But there was not as much discussion as I would have liked comparing the three potential fallbacks mentioned in the post, and no new potential fallbacks were mentioned.
  • I think if a solid, workable fallback that everyone is comfortable with can be decided on, then making the decision to drop support would be made a lot easier.
  • Dropping support for lower versions of IE could impact up to 2m WordPress users on the high end.
• Discussion continues on a follow-up post –> Continued Discussion on Browser Support
• There will be an additional dev chat this week to further discuss the fallback strategy to be used if support is dropped for older browsers. This chat will take place on March 15, 2017 at 12:00 EDT.

Core team reps

• request from @helen that we consider confirming updated reps
• Nominations for @jorbin and @afercia
• Please comment with any additional nominations and we’ll review/confirm in an upcomming dev chat

General announcements

• A11y: #35566 to replace widget, create new widget, or other option from @afercia
  • A couple proposals on the ticket. Some work was done on them also at WC Europe.
  • We’ve discussed this issue during last accessibility bug-scrub on Monday and thought to bring it to everyone’s attention.
  • Before moving on, we’d like to:
    • see if there’s consensus in removing the title attributes there
    • and most of all, get feedback and recommendations about the best path forward, especially from people who have more experience than the a11y team has in managing backwards compatibility issues
  • As “tooltips” can be a controversial topic so the second proposal doesn’t use them
  • Looking for input on the best option: Deprecating the old widget and introduce a new one? Just replace the current widget? Or something else?
• #39377: wpautop adds a extra </p>
  • @pbearne looking for dev-feedback, input from @azaozz
• In a minor release we can consider string changes in moderation and for core focuses only, but we’d need a string freeze two weeks prior.

#4-7-4, #core, #dev-chat, #summary