This update should coincide with the last 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. releaseRelease A release is the distribution of the final version of an application. A software release may be either public or private and generally constitutes the initial or new generation of a new or upgraded application. A release is preceded by the distribution of alpha and then beta versions of the software. (5). As usual, plenty of fixes were addressed across the different areas. Some long-standing usability issues were improved around image uploads, permalinks, columns, video backgrounds, etc. It’s now also possible for plugins to remove coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. panels from the Document 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.. 

Help reviewing open PRs heading into RC will be greatly appreciated!

4.4 / WordPress 5.0 (Beta 5) 🐚

• Improves discoverability of permalinks by adding permalink panel to the document sidebar.
• Improves margins, column child blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience., and mobile display of columns.
• Allow for programmatically removing editor document panels.
• Replaces the uploading indicator of images and galleries with a spinner and faded out image.
• Toolbar for floats was a little offset beyond the mobile breakpoint, now fixed.
• Text and code editing blocks did not have width set, now set to fill the space.
• Correctly align URL input autocomplete.
• Improve animations: new, consistent naming convention, adds editor prefix, and moves keyframe animations (which don’t work well with mixins) into the edit post style.
• Hover styles were showing on mobile, where hover is not available – now disabled.
• Click and drag was incorrectly triggering a selection event in the block list under the popover, resulting in the popover dismissing. This was causing blocks to be selected when trying to set links to open in a new tab, for example. Fixed by preventing the mouse down event from propagating.
• Adds some padding to the block inserter so that it never overlaps text in nested contexts or mobile views.
• Better handle images larger than the editor by allowing a 2.5x buffer. Allows images inserted in TwentyNineteen and other themes that have a wider than 580px editor width, to look as expected, but prevents infinite resizing of images.
• Stop mousedown event propagating through the toolbar, fixing problem of unexpectedly selecting blocks.
• Improve the way that long words are broken on multiple lines, using word-break: keep-all;
• Preserve the ratio of video backgrounds in cover blocks, videos may be cropped to fit but will keep their original ratio.
• It was not possible to scroll a long menu on first load 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/, fixed by removing sticky-menu.

Bug Fixes

• Properly check for allowed types of Media in Media Placeholder components.
• “Resolve” and “Convert to HTMLHTML HyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers.” buttons were not clickable (regressionregression A software bug that breaks or degrades something that previously worked. Regressions are often treated as critical bugs or blockers. Recent regressions may be given higher priorities. A "3.6 regression" would be a bug in 3.6 that worked as intended in 3.5.), now resolved.
• Exclude HTML editing from Columns and Column blocks.
• Better handle links without href, which were showing as `undefined`.
• Renders block appender after the template is processed, to prevent incorrectly inserting new paragraphs.
• Parent pages were being lost when draft pages were autosaved, fixed by removing parent pages from autosave requests and refactoring to stop using “parent” as the path argument name.
• Adding line breaks in formatted content in quote blocks were not working correctly, fixed by persisting formats when new lines are added.
• Prevent users in the contributor role from using blocks that require upload privileges.
• Fix block selection in removing blocks, correct typo in comparison.
• Japanese text (double byte characters) was not usable in the list block, fixed by changing handling of composition events.
• Better handles different text encodings (e.g. emoji) within a block in block validation.
• Use a query argument instead of data to prevent error being thrown on post refresh.

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)

• Keyboard navigation was not working as expected in Firefox, added extra key binding.
• Adds missing alt values to images when editing.
• Better communicate block nesting level by using unordered lists.
• Fix sidebar icons being incorrectly announced in NVDA by adding a span with aria-hidden="true".
• Fixes block toolbar aria label to announce “block tools toolbar” rather than “block toolbar (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)).
• Adjusts focus on media and text blocks to select the overall block, not the child paragraph block.

Performance

• Refactors i18ni18n Internationalization, or the act of writing and preparing code to be fully translatable into other languages. Also see localization. Often written with a lowercase i so it is not confused with a lowercase L or the numeral 1. Often an acquired skill. module to replaces Jed with Tannin for significant performance improvements.
• Replace getSelectedBlock and getMultiSelectedBlocks with more performant getSelectedBlockClientId and a getBlocks selectors in copy handler.
• Replace getBlock selector in favor of the more performant getBlockName.
• Replace getSelectedBlock with more performant getSelectedBlockClientId and new isBlockValid selectors in the BlockToolbar.
• Replace getSelectedBlock with more performant getSelectedBlockClientId and new isBlockValid selectors in the Block Inspector.
• Replaces getInserterItems with a new hasInserterItems selector which is more performant, and makes some adjustments to memorization.
• Avoid using the getSelectedBlock selector in autocompleters.
• Remove use of getBlock selector in the DefaultBlockAppender and EditorKeyboardShortcuts components.

Other Changes

• Move undo handling out of TinyMCE and into the RichText component.
• is_gutenberg_page incorrectly assumes get_current_screen exists, add check.
• Brings code inline with CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets. standards by switching font weight to numeric values.
• Wrapped component would not the most up-to-date store values if it incurred a store state change during its own mount (e.g. dispatching during its own constructor), resolved by rerunning selection.
• Display an error message if Javascript is disabled.
• Update to React 16.6.3.
• Adds missing components dependency for RichText.
• Refactors list block to remove previously exposed RichText/TinyMCE logic.
• Removes focusOnMount prop from NavigableToolbar components, which was generating a warning.
• Refactor checks for upload permissions, removing unnecessary checks for store permissions.
• Use the large image size when inserting images in both galleries and image blocks.
• Fixes dependency of wp-polyfill which needs to be registered before 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 React-Dom when plugins rely on WP’s React.
• Mark onSplit as unstable as it is pending refactor.
• Remove 4.4 deprecated features.
• Fix SCSS syntax error.
• Remove export of previously removed function.

Testing

• Add an E2E test for unsupported blocks.
• Refactor E2E utility functions.

Documentation

• Formatting updates to copy guidelines.
• Makes headings consistent in the dropdown documentation.
• Removes outdated documentation referring to function support in registerBlockType.
• Fixes some typos and line breaks in block design documentation.
• Fixes some typos and improves readability of README.

Mobile Apps

• Adds toolbar to the editing block, and edit button.
• Passes the `isSelected` prop down to the implementation of RichText components to makemake A collection of P2 blogs at make.wordpress.org, which are the home to a number of contributor groups, including core development (make/core, formerly "wpdevel"), the UI working group (make/ui), translators (make/polyglots), the theme reviewers (make/themes), resources for plugin authors (make/plugins), and the accessibility working group (make/accessibility). them respond properly to focus changes.

Deprecations removed with this version.

• Current PRs for review: 40 in 4.5 Milestone (-41 from 4.4).
• Open issues in 5.0 RC: 108 (-30) — This will be heavily triaged tomorrow based on what gets merged from current 4.5 open PRs.
• Open issues in 5.0.0: 10 (+2)
• Open issues in 5.0.1: 4
• Open issues in 5.0.x (fast follow): 37 (+15)
• Current beta: Beta 4, 12th November.
• Current 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: 4.4, released today.
• Next Beta: Beta 5, to be released today.
• Next release: 5.0 RC, planned for next Monday.

#gutenberg-new