Editor chat summary: 7 October, 2020

This post summarizes the weekly editor chat meeting (agenda here) held on 2020-10-07 14:00 UTC in Slack. Moderated by @get_dave.

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/ 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 updates

  • Attendees were reminded that the release of Gutenberg 9.2.0 will be delayed by 1 week in order to better sync with the 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 for WordPress 5.6.
  • This means that October 19th will be the RCrelease candidate One of the final stages in the version release cycle, this version signals the potential to be a final release to the public. Also see alpha (beta). for Gutenberg 9.2 and the stable release will be on October 21.
  • We reviewed @youknowriad‘s “What’s new in Gutenberg” post focusing mainly on the last major releasemajor release A release, identified by the first two numbers (3.6), which is the focus of a full release cycle and feature development. WordPress uses decimaling count for major release versions, so 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, and 3.1 are sequential and comparable in scope. of Gutenberg 9.1.0. Highlights included:
    • 200 commits and 77 contributors!
    • new `ComboBoxControl` component – useful for making a selection where the number of entries can be very high.
    • Lots of 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) enhancements.
    • Category selection for Block Patterns.
    • “Open in new tab” feature for the Social Links 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..
    • Image Size control for the Media & Text block. 
  • A 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. release for Gutenberg 9.1.1 was also published during the chat which contained fixes for the 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. screen.

Preparation for WordPress 5.6 Beta 1

  • WordPress 5.6 will be the third and final major release of WordPress for 2020. As mentioned above Beta 1 is due on October 20th and this represents the cut-off point for new commits/features.
  • The focus for Gutenberg this month will be on deciding what can/cannot be ready for inclusion in WordPress 5.6.
  • A reminder that the Navigation Screen has already been removed from 5.6 in order that we can focus hard on refining the Widgets Screen (and associated editor APIs) with the aim of having it ready for inclusion.
  • Follow along with where things stand on this WordPress 5.6 Must Haves project board.

Monthly Plan & Key Project updates

Widgets screen

@mapk, @andraganescu and @zieladam provided the update:

  • Moved out of experimental status.
  • Big focus for this month in an effort to have it included in WordPress 5.6.
  • @mapk has created some issues around keyboard navigation in widgets screen and will complete all design related issues today (hopefully).
  • @zieladam noted that bringing the new editor into 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. is quite a challenge. We would appreciate commenting with any and all ideas anyone might have on this issue.
  • @zieladam said they’re also hoping to bring custom blocks and reusable blocks into the widgets editor soon (right now only coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. blocks are available).
  • Please help with testing – there’s a call for testing and a place to share Issues identified.
  • Follow the project board for the Widgets Screen.

Global Styles & Editor focused APIs

@jorgefilipecosta provided the update:

  • Editable color palette ready to be merged.
  • PR that passes the editor settings dynamically, so when a setting is edited on the edit site screen the block editor shows immediately without a need for a reload.
  • Important proposal for a mechanism to automatically generate the preset classes (e.g.: themes will not need to create classes for colors, gradients, font sizes etc anymore).
  • Many follow up PR’s that we need to do after merging this ones:
    • Generate preset classes on the client-side
    • Make sure the palettes that appear on the global styles blocks are the ones associated with that block not the global ones (currently it just uses what useEditorFeature returns and it seems to be returning the global ones).
    • Make sure we use the presets vars on global styles. E.g.: if we set a preset font size, the style output should be font-size: var( –wp…) and not the value.

Full Site Editing

No one was available to provide an update so @get_dave provided some from his notes:

@vindl then stepped in to provide more detail on Milestone 2:

  • The template selector has been moved to the navigation sidebar. The pages dropdown will likely follow suit in the next couple of days, with which we’ll complete the removal of those dropdowns from the headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. area.
  • There is a PR open that adds the basic dropdown for Document Settings in the site editor. The exact content for it still needs to be decided by design.
  • Nice progress on template part visibility. The entity spotlight mode is ready to be merged, and the same goes for template part hover interaction provided that it’s approved by design.

Customizer

No one was available to provide an update. If anyone would like to provide this async, then please leave an update in the comments.

Task Coordination

Open Floor

All items this week came from the agenda comments:

The switch to taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. terms for FSE template post theme tracking

Moving forward with the Accordion block

  • @paaljoachim questioned how we can move forward with the Accordion block as it seems to have stalled.
  • Request for feedback and input on the PRs.

Will the Gutenberg repo participate in Hacktoberfest?

  • @zzap asked if Gutenberg will mark any of 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/ issues for Hacktoberfest?
  • @get_dave noted that Hacktoberfest was affiliated with Digital Ocean.
  • @aaroncampbell corrected that Hacktoberfest is actually a wider-reaching movement (beyond Digital Ocean) – generally a kind of concerted effort to pitch in an help out open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL..
  • It was noted that Hacktoberfest can be super spammy as people submit dozens of low-quality PRs just so they can get a free t-shirt.
  • @paaljoachim and @aaroncampbell suggested it might still be a good way to get feedback on the project and get others involved.
  • @get_dave noted we already have a Good First Issue tag which could be used to direct Hacktoberfest contributors to.
  • It was noted that a repo must opt in to Hacktoberfest – it was suggested that @youknowriad and the Core team should leave their opinion and decision in the meeting notes (that’s here!).

Thanks to everyone who attended.