This post summarizes the weekly editor chat meeting (agenda here) held on 2020-11-25 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/ 9.4.0 Recap

• It was noted the current major Gutenberg release was 9.4.0 (with a minor version also available at 9.4.1).
• We reviewed @youknowriad‘s “What’s new in Gutenberg” post for November 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 9.4.0. Highlights included:
  • Percentage widths for Buttons 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. buttons.
  • Ability to switch between block variations in the Navigation block once it is inserted.
  • Size support for Social Icons.
  • Font size support for the List Block.

Preparation for WordPress 5.6

• WordPress 5.6 is due for release on the 8th December 2020.
• Release candidaterelease 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). #2 is due on 1st December.
• As mentioned in previous meetings Beta 1 (October 20th) represented the cut-off point for new commits/features.
• It was noted that the project board for WordPress 5.6 is now almost empty.

Monthly Plan & Key Project updates

• We reviewed the overarching plan for November (courtesy of @daisyo).
• We then requested updates on the key projects.

Global Styles & Editor focused APIs

• For Global Styles, focus remains on tightening up and fixing the flows, with the goal of preparing a v1 that can land as coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. 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. early in the 5.7 cycle.
• A tracking issue for Global Styles is available and the Github label provides an overall picture.
• List of “things for v1” is available.
• Items landed this week include:
  • Font Style & Font Weight can be now enabled separately.
  • Font appearance enabled for global context.
  • Continue to improve user colors.
  • Fix for font-size units.
  • Block panels sorted alphabetically.
  • Stabilized the second piece of “global styles” in the server: WP_Theme_JSON_Resolver.
  • Reduced the amount of metadata we send to the client.

Full Site Editing

• @youknowriad updated us on FSE milestone 1 (Framework):
  • Experimentation with PHP block based templates – no decisions yet.
  • Exploring access to the template level editing inside the post editor.
  • Starting to think about how we  can make alignments declarative (controllable by block containers and 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.).
• @ntsekouras updated us on FSE milestone 5: Query block with a link to a PR for the Query block grid view.

Widgets screen, Navigation screen and 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.

Updates on these projects were combined due to lower levels of activity. @andraganescu provided the update (also posted in the agenda):

• Widgets screen and Customizer screen:
  • the blocks in customizer issue generated a hallway hangout.
  • All feedback welcome.
• Navigation screen is still paused.
• Navigation block will have some updates incoming, there has been progress with a better placeholder / default state.

Task Coordination

• @jorgefilipecosta
  • will help fix the date time issues we are facing.
  • work to improve the client side metadata and code, expose metadata wp-cliWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/ can use to know what parts of theme.json are translatable.
  • Will also review global styles related PR’s proposed by others.
• @retrofox – merged PR for Full Height Alignment Toolbar: Implementation + Cover integration 🎉.
• @ntsekouras
  • Query block grid view.
  • Enable PostFeaturedImage block to set and replace featured image.
  • Various bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. fixes including 5.6 issues.
• @annezazu –
  • Some minor help with a few 5.6 related posts,
  • light GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can 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/ triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors., 
  • shipped a handbook page documenting creative ways the community is connecting during this time,
  • started the basics of “What’s Next” for December,
  • created a few on join onboarding messages for a new person joining core-editor!
  • hoping to ship the latter two by next meeting. 
• @paaljoachim
  • Researching the structure of the handbooks.
  • Looking at structure improvements and better readability.
  • Setting up a dev site for explorations. 
• @nosolosw
  • focused on making progress for Global Styles v1: helping folks with reviews, and preparing PRs.
  • will be looking into supporting child themes in GS/FSE.
• @aristath
  • focusing on the Query block and any other hard-blockers we may have for FSE.
  • Progress was made in the PR to only load assets for blocks that are used on a page, could use feedback & reviews.
• @karmatosed
  • picking up issues and fix some hitches,
  • explored responding to needs design issues and updated the documentation around the Figma libraries.
  • need help with why this PR isn’t passing tests.
  • also need a review on this PR.
  • Preferences UI now has a design for iterations so it’s moved to dev!
• @itsjonq
  • focused on G2 Components 
  • doing roadmap/task planning to prepare for the project to be proposed/integrated into Gutenberg.
  • Roughly estimated the task/timeline in this Google sheet.
  • Basically done Phase 1: Prep
  • I used Miro for the roadmap as well as the initial integration task planning.
  • Phase 1 tasks are created/tracked within the G2 Github repo. Tracking the next ones in the Gutenberg repo when it’s time. See this post for more information.
• @mapk
  • Iterating on blocks in the Customizer.
  • Query block design tweaks.
  • Working on the Featured ImageFeatured image A featured image is the main image used on your blog archive page and is pulled when the post or page is shared on social media. The image can be used to display in widget areas on your site or in a summary list of posts. block flow.

Open Floor

PR for enabling FSE in Windows needs review

• @bobbingwide has a PR which will enable Full Site Editing on Windows – needs review.
• @youknowriad asked if someone with a Windows environment could test it.
• @frankklein queried the approach in the PR but @bobbingwide was happy with the current approach.

Issue with post-content and post-excerptExcerpt An excerpt is the description of the blog post or page that will by default show on the blog archive page, in search results (SERPs), and on social media. With an SEO plugin, the excerpt may also be in that plugin’s metabox. output in FSE

• @bobbingwide has raised an Issue about getting the post_content and post_excerpt to output correctly in Full Site Editing.
• Looking for someone to help to resolve the problem.

Draft for What’s Next post for December?

• @annezazu provided update on some items are currently on the list for the What’s Next post for December:
  • Addressing 5.6 feedback
  • Global Styles & Editor focused APIs
  • Full Site Editing (including Query Block)
  • 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/editor
• Requested input to gain clarity on current state of Widget Screen work.
• @andraganescu agreed to provide the necessary information.

Automated “Welcome” messages in Core Editor 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/.?

• @annezazu suggested that it would be good to have some messages automatically sent to new people who join this channel.
• Slack has a way to do that automatically.
• Problem: any message sent to new people will unfurl the preview for certain links. Cannot disable this on a per-channel basis.
• @aristath suggested wrapping links in backticks.
• @karmatosed suggested providing a link to a pre-existing “Welcome” page.
• @annezazu outlined her proposed options:
  • One message sent in the core editor channel when someone joins with a very brief message and a nudge to the forums for support requests.
  • One message sent via DM with more specific links about where to report bugs, meeting information, the handbook, etc.
• Any additional feedback is welcome on the Google Doc.

“Schedule” displaying instead of “Publish” on new posts/pages

• @karmatosed highlighted an Issue where “Schedule” displaying instead of “Publish” on new posts/pages.
• Might be 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. / not in latest collection over broken.
• Needs a fix.

Thanks to everyone who attended!

#core-editor, #core-editor-summary, #meeting, #meeting-notes, #summary