Agenda, Dev Chat, Wednesday May 8, 2024

The next WordPress Developers Chat will take place on  Wednesday May 8, 2024 at 20:00 UTC in the core channel on Make WordPress Slack.

The live meeting will focus on the discussion for upcoming releases, and have an open floor section.

Additional items will be referred to in the various curated agenda sections, as below. If you have ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. requests for help, please do continue to post details in the comments section at the end of this agenda.

Announcements

The WordPress 6.6 roadmap has been published.

WordPress 6.5.3 was released on Tuesday, May 7. This minor releaseMinor Release A set of releases or versions having the same minor version number may be collectively referred to as .x , for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.3, and all other versions in the 5.2 (five dot two) branch of that software. Minor Releases often make improvements to existing features and functionality. features 12 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 in CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and 9 bug fixes for 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. You can review a summary of the maintenance updates in this release by reading the Release Candidate announcement.

Forthcoming releases

Next 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.: 6.6

We are currently in the WordPress 6.6 release cycle.

Next maintenance release: 6.5.4

Now that 6.5.3 is released, let’s discuss planning for the next maintenance release.

Next 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/ release: 18.3

Gutenberg 18.3 is scheduled for May 8 and will include these issues.

Discussions

Following up with some updates from previous week’s discussion:

• New 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/. channels: #core-interactivity-api was created to help folks working there better organize and collaborate.
• Gutenberg commits: as a way to bring additional visibility to changes committed in the Gutenberg repo, we’ve started an experiment to show commits to the trunktrunk A directory in Subversion containing the latest development code in preparation for the next major release cycle. If you are running "trunk", then you are on the latest revision. branchbranch A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses branches to store the latest development code for each major release (3.9, 4.0, etc.). Branches are then updated with code for any minor releases of that branch. Sometimes, a major version of WordPress and its minor versions are collectively referred to as a "branch", such as "the 4.0 branch". (PR merges) in the #core channel.

This week, we will have time for open discussion about the Roadmap for the WordPress 6.6 release cycle.

Feel free to suggest additional topics in the comments.

Highlighted posts

• Recap: WordPress 6.5 “Regina” Retrospective
• Merge Proposal: Preferred Languages
• Progress Report: HTML API
• Proposal: Server to client data sharing for Script Modules
• Data Liberation: Project plan
• Data Liberation: Outreach recap and updates

Core Editor Updates

Props to @annezazu for helping put together these updates.

• Color & Typography variations: The PR to move color presets into the palette view was merged which helps better communicate what’s changing when selecting a different color palette from a style variation. Up next is work to make it clearer how to edit a site’s palette and improve filtering for typography variations where the heading and body fonts are the same.
• Data Views: work to remove “manage all parts” has been completed with some additional tasks in place on the tracking issue around consolidating patterns and template parts in the UIUI User interface. Separately, some design thinking is going into improving the ‘No results’ view when landing in one of these data views.
• Block bindings APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways.: check out the latest update of completed work and remaining blockers + decisions to make for the release. Please review and chime in! This includes efforts to improve the UI.
• Grid layout: three PRs are in progress and ready for reviews for this feature: Use coloured overlay for grid visualiser, Resize to top and left, and Ensure min height of new grid rows. Please help test if you can!
• Expanding style variations: a recent blockerblocker A bug which is so severe that it blocks a release. has been split into its own issue Reducing specificity of default block style variation styles. Please chime in with thoughts on possible approaches.
• Unify Site Editor details view with the Inspector: new PRs implements the new discussion panel design and implement new author panel design.
• Unify publish flows: PR was merged in GB 18.3 to bring the same, new publish flow in the Post Editor to the Site Editor. This will be a big area to test and explore since the publish flow impacts so many.
• Zoomed out view: various PRs are underway to Fix zoom out UI scale, Enable Zoom-out mode in the post editor, and Try “Add Pattern” UI for zoom out quick inserter to make it easier to get a sense of the focus on pattern interactions when zoomed out.
• View style hierarchy: Local block appearance controls should reflect values from global styles / theme.json is ready to go, design wise, and the PR Add: API to allow blocks to access global styles likely needs to be refreshed to make progress here. Dev help wanted!
• Design updates:  Standardized way to modify interactive states (:hover, :focus .etc) for blocks was refreshed with a new design. It’s likely not feasible for 6.6 but would be great to see progress here if any devs can help. Add Box Shadow Component was also refreshed with new designs.
• Performance: while both outside of 6.6, worth noting two recently added issues Add Summaries to Performance Workflow Runs to help better surface performance data & Tracking: Client-side media processing to improve performance and ensure support for more modern image formats.

Tickets for assistance

Tickets for 6.6 will be prioritized.

Please include detail of tickets / PR and the links into comments, and if you intend to be available during the meeting if there are any questions or will be async.

Open floor

Items for this can be shared in the comments.

Props to @annezazu for reviewing.

#agenda, #core, #dev-chat