@chanthaboune led the chat on the standard agenda.
Announcements/Highlighted Posts
Gutenberg 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/ 8.1
@youknowriad announced the minutes-old release of Gutenberg 8.1 and linked to the changelog.
Check out the full release post here.
@jeffpaul pointed the group to this WCEU Contributor Day post and asked for volunteers to help on the day and beforehand.
@marybaum volunteered to do a video about contributing to Core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. in ways other than code, and the group asked her to please keep it brief. She promised it will be no more than a minute long.
@clorith is doing a video that focuses directly on code contributions.
@sippis posted this link to the full Contributor Day P2 and has made herself available for questions. @jeffpaul and @chanthaboune did as well.
Core Rep Elections
@jeffpaul reminded the group that May 14 is the deadline for nominating prospective Core Reps. These are very specifically not lead developer roles — they are roles that represent the work and interests of the Core team to other teams working on the project and to folks outside it as well.
See more in Jeff’s post here, including nominations and how voting will work.
Full-site (versus network, blog) editing outreach beta 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.
Because the best things come in sets of three, @chanthaboune announced that May 14 is also the deadline to join the Full-Site-Editing outreach beta that she’s putting together.
Fill out the form and get all the details here.
Auto-Updates Feature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins.
@audrasjb and @azozz updated the group on the status of Auto-Updates for Themes and Plugins, which as a feature plugin is at v.0.8.
The big news is the Core merge ticket, which is #50052, and its first patch 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., courtesy of @pbiron. As @audrasjb put it, “It’s a pretty big patch!”
Then he laid out the plan for the feature plugin:
Now, we’ll update the plugin 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 with a PR that will deactivate the plugin when running the WordPress 5.5 / trunk 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. to avoid conflicts.
Then, we’ll release A release is the distribution of the final version of an application. A software release may be either public or private and generally constitutes the initial or new generation of a new or upgraded application. A release is preceded by the distribution of alpha and then beta versions of the software. version 0.8 of WP Auto-updates Feature plugin.
@audrasjb
Upcoming Releases
Major 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.: WordPress 5.5
@chanthaboune told the group she had a few more things to add to a 5.5 planning post; it is up here, and as of today we are kicking off the Countdown to Beta.
Pending further input, beta will be July 7, eight weeks from right now.
@chanthaboune noted in the chat that she’s still pulling together the Release Squad, adding, “But I wanted to see if anyone had volunteered for the release squad already that I might have missed.”
@marybaum and @whyisjake each, as they said, “volunteer formally, if not implicitly, . . ” to fulfill the roles they have in the immediate past.
With a wry emoji smile, @sergeybiryukov volunteered to reprise his tech-lead role as well.
Minor 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.: WordPress 5.4.2
@audrasjb referred to this list of 14 tickets in the 5.4.2 milestone. One ticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. in particular caused concern in the group (Which one? You’ll see when you click on the list!)
So @whyisjake volunteered to lead a point 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. for mid-June. @audrasjb volunteered to help with all the things.
Open Floor
There were no specific calls from component maintainers, so the group moved on into Open Floor.
A request for eyes on a ticket
@apedog asked for some feedback on ticket #48223.
@jeffpaul noted almost immediately the ticket touches a component—Rewrite Rules—that at the moment has no formal maintainer. But then he wondered aloud if @sergeybiryukov and @asif2bd, who maintain the parent component Permalinks, could take a look.
Of course, @sergeybiryukov agreed.
Accessibility 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) plans for 5.5
@audrasjb transitioned from that ticket into his accessibility update. Here’s what he and his squad are planning for 5.5:
Alternative WP List Tables views (work started on Trac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress.)
Accessible color schemes (work started on GitHub 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/)
Refine/replace the upper-right WP-Admin (and super admin) fly-out menu (work started on Trac)
And of course all the other tickets/bugs in the milestone
Josepha reminded the group she’s heading out on June 8, and we won’t see her back until September.
She pointed to a post that shows who to ask which questions, based on the topic and people’s areas of expertise.
A forum post about HTML HyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. entities
@joyously brought this forum post to the group, starting a lively discussion about sanitizing and escaping HTML in blocks and the Classic editor.
Finally …
Remember those May 14 deadlines. By now, that’s today! And watch this space for news on Core reps, the release squad and more.
#devchat
