Dev Chat Summary: August 30th (4.9 week 5)

This post summarizes the dev chat meeting from August 30th (agenda, Slack archive).

4.9 schedule review

• 4 weeks until the feature project merge deadline, 5 weeks until 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. 1
• CodeMirror feature plugin (aka Better Code Editing) aiming for merge in 2 weeks
  • @westonruter: Integration with CodeMirror’s linter is almost done to prevent the user from being able to save changes to the file editor, Additional CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets. 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., and the Custom HTMLHTML HyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. 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. if there are syntax errors in the code.
  • Demo: Blocking WordPress file editor saves via linting in CodeMirror
  • Still want to implement a PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher linter to help prevent whitescreening a site
  • Prior effort by @georgestephanis to add a PHP linter by using the PHP binary on the server had to be reverted because it will not be available on many hosts
  • May be able to implement a rudimentary PHP linter that uses CodeMirror’s tokenizer and use it to at least make sure that basic syntax is valid
  • For anyone who wants to contribute, please follow Issue#48
  • Aiming to release v0.5.0 of the plugin on WordPress.org today
  • It needs user testing and code review.
• @azaozz: looking for second opinion on #41752.
  • Should we refactor the JSJS JavaScript, a web scripting language typically executed in the browser. Often used for advanced user interfaces and behaviors. so it still works with (very) old plugins and themes?
  • It should replace the UIUI User interface with a simple input type=“file”. If yes, any takers to do that?
  • If only a handful of plugins/themes affected, then we could work with the 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 update rather than maintain back-compat in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. for something that is dead.
  • @westonruter: will upload the results of my acking for affected plugins/themes to TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. when it finishes
• @westonruter: one of the 4.9 feature ideas that had excitement was updating themes and plugins via ZIP upload, where this is not allowed (see #9757)
  • This work currently needs an owner, otherwise it is in risk of getting punted from the release
  • There are some good orientation comments at the end by pento and dd32 which can help you get started
• @westonruter: big Customizer features planned for this release, including drafting and scheduling, have designs currently being worked on by @joshuawold and @folletto (see: #39896 #28721)
• Reminder of the tickets in the goals post targeted for 4.9, please help specifically with these… thanks!

Update to Editor weekly meeting focus

• Office hours on Wednesdays at 17:00 UTC are becoming tickets sessions to go through issues together for each weekly milestone of GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/.
• Please join then to help move that project forward.

#4-9, #core, #dev-chat, #summary