Admin form controls height and alignment standardization in WordPress 5.3.1

WordPress 5.3 introduced some notable Admin CSS changes to improve administration 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) and consistency with the 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. editor.

These changes made more obvious that form controls heights and alignments were not consistent across WP Adminadmin (and super admin).

Before WordPress 5.3, there were already some inconsistencies between form controls. For reference, WordPress 5.2 form controls various alignments and heights are grouped in the screenshot below:

Form controls alignment and height inconsistencies in WordPress 5.2

WordPress 5.3 Admin CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets. changes brought more attention to those general inconsistencies on form controls. And several users and contributors reported these inconsistencies as regressions from 5.3.

Example of form controls inconsistencies in WordPress 5.3

Although these inconsistencies cannot be considered as regressions from 5.3 since they existed before 5.3 Admin CSS changes, WordPress 5.3.1 introduces some fixes on heights and alignments.

5.3
5.3.1
5.3
5.3.1
5.3
5.3.1

WordPress 5.3.1 changes include:

  • Standardized height basis of 30px for all form controls
  • Consistent line height basis of 30px across the interface
  • 14px font size basis for select controls option text
  • Remove various top/bottom margin and padding

These changes are part of a continuous effort to improve styling and consistency of all form controls in the WordPress admin pages. In general, 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 and WordPress developers are encouraged to:

  • remove any fixed height: flexible heights are now the WordPress recommended standard to allow form controls to better scale with text zoom
  • remove any custom top and bottom padding values
  • remove any custom line-height value
  • remove any custom min-height value
  • update custom focus/hover styles on custom UIUI User interface components to match the new WordPress focus/hover styles

For full details about these changes, see the related changeset on WordPress TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress.. WordPress developers and plugin authors may also want to visit the related Trac ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker.: #48420

#5-3-1, #core-css, #dev-notes