WordPress 6.7 Field Guide

This guide outlines major developer features and breaking changes in 6.7 and is published in the 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). phase to help inform WordPress extending developers, CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. developers, and others.

There are more than 300 Core Trac tickets included in WordPress 6.7, 87 of which are enhancements and feature requests, and more than 200 bug fixes. This release includes 23 tickets focused on performance, 21 on accessibility, and 12 on modernizing code and applying coding standards. Changes in 6.7 are spread across 38 Core components.

This release includes 445 enhancements, 464 bug fixes, and 55 accessibility improvements 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 (a.k.a. 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/).

Below is a breakdown of the most important developer-related changes included in WordPress 6.7.


Table of contents


Block Editor

WordPress 6.7 brings 8 Gutenberg releases into core – 18.6, 18.7, 18.8, 18.9, 19.0, 19.1, 19.2, and 19.3. As in most recent WordPress releases a large part of the updates are related to the block editor and its features.

General Updates

Design Tools

The ongoing effort to consolidate design tools has continued and several blocks now support more additional design tools.

Other

There are also a large number of other changes which have been listed in a miscellaneous block editor changes dev notedev note Each important change in WordPress Core is documented in a developers note, (usually called dev note). Good dev notes generally include a description of the change, the decision that led to this change, and a description of how developers are supposed to work with that change. Dev notes are published on Make/Core blog during the beta phase of WordPress release cycle. Publishing dev notes is particularly important when plugin/theme authors and WordPress developers need to be aware of those changes.In general, all dev notes are compiled into a Field Guide at the beginning of the release candidate phase..

Interactivity 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. & Script Modules

WordPress 6.7 includes updates for the Interactivity API, such as a new way to interact with server state changes in client-side navigation. Also, script modules updates include improvements for loading existing scripts as module dependencies.

HTMLHTML HyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. API

WordPress 6.7 includes many helpful updates to the HTML API. This work includes a few new features and a major improvement to the HTML Processor’s usability.

I18Ni18n Internationalization, or the act of writing and preparing code to be fully translatable into other languages. Also see localization. Often written with a lowercase i so it is not confused with a lowercase L or the numeral 1. Often an acquired skill.

Various internationalization (i18n) improvements are in WordPress 6.7, including:

Performance

WordPress 6.7 also brings some new performance focused enhancements, including a new way to register blocks that uses generated PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher files to bypass performance bottlenecks of loading / parsing 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. files and more.

Miscellaneous Developer Changes

Some other notable changes for developers included in WordPress 6.7 are:

Props to @fabiankaegy, and @davidbaumwald & @peterwilsoncc for review.

#6-7, #field-guide