CSS Chat Summary: 5th March 2020

Full meeting transcript on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/CQ7V4966Q/p1583442173087500

I (@isabel_brison) facilitated the meeting. 

We started by discussing if we should change the meeting time to accommodate daylight savings changes coming soon. No decision has been made yet; if you have an interest in this meeting and changing/not changing the hour would enable you (or not) to attend, please leave a comment below!

Open Floor

@notlaura started by asking how best to kick off a CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets. audit as discussed last week. Based on last week’s discussion, I had already created a TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. to start thinks off: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/49582 and asked everyone to add to it if I missed anything.

@notlaura asked about workflows for 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. testing. There is no automated visual testing in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. yet, and we discussed setting up visual snapshot testing before making any changes to existing CSS. 

We agreed that adding snapshot testing will not 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. the audit, as the outcome of the audit will be a set of recommendations, but we should have tests in place before we start acting on those recommendations.

We also discussed how to divide up the audit into sub-tasks, and agreed to create smaller tickets to tackle each part as needed. 

@notlaura also suggested leveraging static analysis tools for the audit, suggesting this collection of resources: https://github.com/mre/awesome-static-analysis#css

@sabernhardt suggested running the audit on a public version of WP (5.4 when it’s ready, or one of the RCs if we start earlier), and shared a report on 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 testing for 5.3: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/10/15/report-wp-5-3-admin-css-changes-tested-against-top-20-plugins/ .

At which point we hit the hour, and wrapped up. 

#core-css, #summary