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 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/. 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 leadRelease Lead The community member ultimately responsible for the Release. for the next regularly-scheduled minor releaseMinor Release A set of releases or versions having the same minor version number may be collectively referred to as .x , for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.3, and all other versions in the 5.2 (five dot two) branch of that software. Minor Releases often make improvements to existing features and functionality. (currently versioned as 4.7.4) will be @swissspidy.
• Timeline tentatively set for April-May 2017, but we’ll have to get into 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. 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 triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. 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.

CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. 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

• 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): #35566 to replace 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., create new widget, or other option from @afercia
  • A couple proposals on the ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker.. Some work was done on them also at WC Europe.
  • We’ve discussed this issue during last 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) 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