Agenda, Dev Chat, Wednesday May 15, 2024

The next WordPress Developers Chat will take place on  Wednesday May 15, 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

A reminder that the WordPress 6.6 roadmap has been published. Please also read and leave feedback on the Server to client data sharing for Script Modules proposal. Feel free to leave feedback either during Dev Chat or on the proposal post.

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 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: 18.4

Gutenberg 18.4 is scheduled for release on May 22 and includes these issues.

Discussions

This week, we will continue to discuss the Roadmap for the WordPress 6.6 release cycle, in case anyone has any questions or would like to chat about any of the proposed features, including:

• Data Views in the Site Editor
• Zoom-out mode to compose with patterns
• View inherited style values
• Unifying editor experiences, including publish flow
• Mix and match typography and color palettes from all styles variations
• Syncing specific blocks and attributes of patterns
• Expanding block style variations for more styling options
• Improvements to Grid Layout
• Bringing the Site Editor experience for Pattern management to Classic Themes

If we have time, we can also discuss the canonical 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. plugins proposal. There is an initial issue and discussion here, and a follow-up Gutenberg PR is currently in progress.

Feel free to suggest additional topics in the comments.

Highlighted posts

• Proposal: Server to client data sharing for Script Modules
• Core Editor Improvement: Upgrade your designs
• What’s new in Gutenberg 18.3? (8 May)

CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Editor Updates

Props to @annezazu for putting together these updates.

Get involved:

• Need 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/. review: The ability to add relative paths to theme assets has advanced, however there are implementation details for editor support that are not yet resolved. It’s a big feature and it needs to be done right so if any REST API folks can share thoughts on the proposed approach to resolve relative paths to theme assets in 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. it would be very appreciated.
• Needs dev:  Local block appearance controls should reflect values from global styles / theme.json is ready to go, design wise, and a recent PR to Add global styles to settings using existing context code opens up the door for the remaining dev work to be completed. Please help out here if you’re able to!
• Needs dev feedback: a recent blockerblocker A bug which is so severe that it blocks a release. for overrides in synced patterns has been split into its own issue Reducing specificity of default block style variation styles. Please chime in with thoughts on possible approaches and check out the current compromise.
• Needs copy help: improve overrides modal for enabling and disabling in synced patterns.

Updates:

• Data Views: work was done to add “edit” & “all actions” buttons in list layout for all index views that support it (pages, templates). In other news, a very experimental and intentionally hacky PR looked at what it might be like to take the data views work and apply it to the Media Library (this won’t be merged).
• Overrides in Synced Patterns: recent design exploration to Try using synced color on the block icon for overrides to communicate what’s overridable instead of the connections icon along with Add help text for selecting a block with an override.
• Grid layout: Try using coloured overlay instead of border for grid visualiser is progressing with some recent design feedback to ensure the outline colors match text color to ensure proper contrast and a recent issue was opened summarizing known problems with the interactive resizing that’s being worked on.
• Color & Style variations: slight design update with a PR toMake color variations fit in a bit better visually
• Unify publish flows: design efforts are underway to solve improve the scheduling flow of new Status dropdown. 
• Zoomed out view: there’s been a flurry of work here including Zoom out: try pattern inserter instead of starter pattern modal, Zoom out: try click through to disengage, Show a preview when dragging and dropping patterns from the inserter, and Try drill down for pattern inserter. Each of these are early explorations. As work continues, a PR has been proposed to remove zoom out from the patterns tab until work is further along/ready.
• Exposing new patterns experience to classic themes: building on the work for 6.6, @Aki Hamano proposes Exposing the Site Editor Patterns page to all users.
• New tracking issue: Post Type Differences: Move away from hard-coding post types as part of what’s coming up with unifying the post and site editors technically.
• Registering templates for plugins: a new PR looks to Add plugin template registration API so plugins can easily register templates and template parts. Check it out for an early look.

Tickets for assistance

Tickets for 6.6 will be prioritized.

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

Open floor

Items for this can be shared in the comments.

Props to @joemcgill for reviewing.

#agenda, #core, #dev-chat