Editor chat summary: 8 April 2020

This post summarizes the latest weekly Editor meeting, held in the #core-editor Slack channel, on Wednesday, April 8, 2020, 14:00 UTC. These meetings coordinate collaboration in the development evolution of the 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/ project. You can find today’s agenda here.

First an update on Gutenberg 7.9 which was pushed one week. Progress has been good so far and release is on track for next week

WordPress 5.4 was released last week. Issue/PR’s are being kept track of using “Backportbackport A port is when code from one branch (or trunk) is merged into another branch or trunk. Some changes in WordPress point releases are the result of backporting code from trunk to the release branch. to WP CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.” label. A 5.4.1 release is not scheduled yet.

Monthly Plan 

It’s early in the month, but the plan looks to be on a good track. The priorities are still the same though and available here 

Task Coordination

@isabel_brison

  • working on Navigation 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.-related tasks, I realized that currently submenus in that block are almost unusable on mobile devices. 
  • I have created PR  21471 to fix them.

@nosolosw

  • I’ve been mostly helping Riad with the refactor of some block properties related to styles, including font-size for paragraph and heading.
  • Pushed a bit to the target block selectors for Global Styles proposal (still work to do).

@youknowriad

  • I have been mostly focused on the Color and gradient support for different blocks and consolidating the way we support these in different blocks. (Also thinking in relation to Global styles)
  • I’m planning to do more work on the inserter and patterns UIUI User interface on the next days

@nfmohit

  • I’m working on adding a vertical style to the Buttons block.
  • PR 20160

@brentswisher

  • I’ve been looking into ways to make Storybook easier to work with, comments/opinions appreciated here
  • Continuing to add stories for missing components
  • Follow up on some old issues/PR’s that have resurfaced

@andraganescu

  • still working on the experimental navigation screen

@pbrocks

  • Reviewed some PRs this past week

@gziolo

  • I’m working on Jest, JSDom, Babel and ESLint upgrades for Gutenberg contributors and wordpress/scripts users 

@itsjonq

  • I’m continuing work on Design Tools
  • Focused specifically on improving the Cover block.
  • I have a PR for inner content alignment
  • Currently focusing on adding padding support!

@michaelarestad 

  • prototype to connect the various designs/functions around Full Site Editing and an iteration of multi-entity saving

@kirilzh

PRs and Issues for Review and Comments

  • PR 20954 Scheduled post does not show correct url on preview
  • PR 21440 Copy/cut input values copying entire block/removing block
    PR 21359 Latest Posts: Fix selected categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. on existing blocks
  • Issue 21391 Comments and review for the Drag & Drop feature
  • Issue 11681 Looking for input into possible changes for block templates 

Open Floor

Global Styles and Theme/Block Color Palettes

There seems to be a lot of (potential) crossover between Global Styles and Theme/Block Color Palettes. Is this something there’s been discussion about?

The focus currently has been on the foundational pieces for Global Styles, but that’s definitely something that we should look at shortly. There may be the possibility to use theme.jsonJSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. to define the palettes and the Global styles UI to potentially allow editing them/choosing colors based on them.

Possible Additions for 5.4.1

  • PR 17413 Add Block Transform to transform Embed blocks into Paragraph blocks.
  • PR 21410 Scheduled posts display the correct url

Today embeds do not function really well. There are cumbersome work arounds if a link wants to embed and one does not want to embed it, as in add a dot then the text link. Or add some text and then a link. Then remove the text again etc. The issue could use additional feedback.

Dynamic content in HTMLHTML HyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. files from Block-Based Themes Issue 20966 

One potentially native solution would be to allow some php in these templates but more thought is needed.

Adding skip to content link and aria labels for FSE
An issue needs to be added to GithubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ to add skip link support for theme authors in FSE. Skip links are one of the most fundamental things for 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) on a site which needs to be hidden to normal users and only visible on keyboard-navigation (tabbing) and screen-readers. The link needs to be the 1st thing on a page, and it needs to link to the main content of the site.

All theme developers add a skip link. It usually points to the <main> element of the page (which 99% of the time has id=”main”). If the template in FSE contains a “content” block, then we could add an ID to it and automatically add the skip-link. If there is no content block, then the skip-link would point to the loopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. block. If there is no loop-block either, then make an educated guess and point to the 1st title or p block. This is a possible solution but more discussion should be directed to a GitHub issue.

PR 21410
Is it possible to generate the permalink as the link property of a scheduled post in the REST APIREST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/., as is the case for published posts now? The answer might be related to the fact that the slug might be already used by the time the post gets published but this is best asked in the #core-restapi channel.

PR 19436 Selection Behaviors with Reusable Blocks

This relates to some funky selection behaviors with reusable blocks, or really any instance of nested Block Editors, where you can have blocks selected in the upper and lower editors at once. RichText buttons are absorbed into the parent, etc,  When experimenting with nested block editors to persist block data to unconventional data stores this problem arises quite a bit. 

Nested block editors may not be a great idea, but potential options could be:

  • The nested block editor should live in a modal or a separate page (link)
  • Use the controlled “InnerBlocks” approach we’re experimenting for template parts (and multi-entity save flow). This approach is not stable 100% yet but seems promising.

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