Dev Chat Summary: September 20th (4.9 week 8)

This post summarizes the dev chat meeting from September 20th (agenda, Slack archive).

4.9 schedule

• 1 week until the feature project merge deadline, 2 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
• Drafting and scheduling (#39896) has designs and is working through development
• Gallery 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. (#41914) is now available in the Core Media Widgets feature plugin, so please test that as we plan to merge it into coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. next week
• Updating a 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 via ZIP (#9757) or drag/drop (#24579) is not getting any traction, so they will likely be punted
• Review needed on #34115 to bring the ability to use oEmbed outside the context of posts
  • This allows the Text widget to have embeds in it, as well as to be able to remove the restriction on the Video widget to only show YouTube and Vimeo
• Long list of Code Editor tickets that could use contributors
  • If you’re interested and capable with JSJS JavaScript, a web scripting language typically executed in the browser. Often used for advanced user interfaces and behaviors. and playing with CodeMirror, #41873 is a great place to start
• Any tickets related to goals in the 4.9 Goals post should be prioritized
• Bug scrub post will be published with dates/times to scrub features and enhancements ahead of the Beta 1 deadline. If you’re interested in helping run a scrub, then please let @jbpaul17 know.
• User testing needed on #39693, especially running it through a battery of theme switching tasks; the goal is to improve the “it just works” experience
  • Testing steps include installing a theme, populating sidebars with widgets, switching to another theme, and checking how the widgets appear in the newly switched theme
  • If you switch back to the old theme, the sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. widgets get restored
  • Testing should be done when switching themes via the WP adminadmin (and super admin) themes page, and also via live preview 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.
  • Themes that have varying numbers of sidebars would be the key to test with. Switching from a theme with 2 sidebars, to one with 4, to another with 1, to another with 5, and so on.
  • If you want to have a public test environment set up with 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. to test, then please pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” @westonruter

Editor update

• Planning on devoting the next #core-js chat to discuss the move away from ReactReact React is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/. and, particularly, the goals we have for JS. If you’re interested in that topic, please find that meeting time in your locale.
• If you want to take an early look at what the Editor team is thinking of, the “Try: Framework-agnostic block interoperability (Vanilla, Vue)” PR is a good start.

General announcements

• Reminder on that the 4.8.2 Security and Maintenance Release went out yesterday
• @dougal: looking for any feedback on #41746 (oEmbed does not respect canonical provider url parameter)
  • A good simplified description of the problem in the ticket comments.
• @soulseekah: concerned about release of 4.8.2, looking for ways to get more vetting of security fixes; related: #41925
• @joyously: want to ensure people reviewed changes in #41828

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