The Road to 3.6 Beta 1

our original schedule had us hitting betaBeta 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. 1 today, March 13th. We’re not quite there. Beta should mean that we’re feature complete, and we’re not. We could do what we’ve done in the past, and declare a beta, while continuing to do feature work, but that just devalues the meaning of “beta”. I want people in the WordPress ecosystem to trust that when we say “beta”, that means we’re feature complete and that they should start seriously testing their themes and plugins against 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. for issues. If we continue with feature development during the beta period, that will just shove back everyone’s testing to the RCrelease 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). period, which will translate to more issues going unnoticed and tarnishing the release.

Consequently, I’m pushing the beta date back two weeks, to March 27th, and the release back one week to April 29th. If our beta period is actually a beta period (to work on bugs, not features), three weeks should be plenty of time. Ditto for the two-week RC period, for major bugs. We’ve needed longer periods in the past because we’ve been doing major feature development through the beta period and into the RC period, which, as mentioned above, I don’t want to do again.

Here is the major new-feature or new-feature-related stuff that needs to be settled and land in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. (if they are going in at all) in the next two weeks (front-loaded as much as possible). Let’s redouble our efforts and get this sorted so we can get a beta out the door.

RevisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision.

  • #16215 – Revisions author “off by one” 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. (@markjaquith) (@markjaquith)
  • #23497 — Finalize UIUI User interface (@markjaquith)

Post Format UI

  • #20564 — Post metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. revisions for PF meta (@markjaquith)
  • #23539 — Use preview PF postmeta
  • #19570 — Main UI tracking ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. (@markjaquith)
  • #23282 — Add shortcodes for inline HTML5 audio / video (@markjaquith)
  • #23673 — Add functions to generate metadata for video / audio (@markjaquith)
  • #23198 — Pass post format as a class to TinyMCE init (@markjaquith)
  • #16047 — Post format display on edit.php (waiting on icons) (@helen)
  • #23725 — Parsing tracking ticket (@markjaquith)
  • #23726 — Show Audio and Video previews on Edit Attachment screen (@markjaquith)
  • #22960 — Add functions to extract images from content, attached to post, [gallery], or arbitrary string (@markjaquith)
  • #23570 — Add functions to extract a URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org from an arbitrary string, HTMLHTML HyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers., or the current $post (@markjaquith)
  • #23572 — Add functions to parse Audio / Video data out of arbitrary content or a post (@markjaquith)
  • #23625 — Add function to extract or parse chat as structured data (@markjaquith)
  • #23347 — Theme fallbacks for post format meta data (@markjaquith)

Twenty Thirteen

Post locking

  • #23665 — One autosave per user per post — has 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. needs testing and commit (@markjaquith)
  • #23697 — Needs some UI love for the lockout message and work around the avatarAvatar An avatar is an image or illustration that specifically refers to a character that represents an online user. It’s usually a square box that appears next to the user’s name. code (@markjaquith)

Nav Menus

  • #23770 — finalize UI for theme locations (@markjaquith)
  • #23450 — nav menu sources as accordion (@markjaquith)
  • #14045 — accessibilityAccessibility 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) mode for nav menu editing (@markjaquith)
  • #23608 — Help text updates (@markjaquith)

#3-6

Twenty Thirteen project update, March 12 2013

This week we are closing as many open issues as possible to prepare for code freeze.

Blockers

Here are the current blockers to getting to a code freeze tomorrow, as scheduled:

  • Post formats: #23619 #23620 #23621 — waiting on the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. functionality to be committed before we can change the theme code (images, videos, galleries, links)
  • #15080: Comment form HTML5 input types — just needs a commit
  • #20088: Improve wp_list_comments() markup — needs a code review from core team dev, then commit

Recently finished

  • Several passes at RTL, editor, and print styles
  • SidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. & footer clearing: #23557
  • Gallery visual fixes: #23742 #23649 #23584
  • Color contrast for accessibilityAccessibility 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): #23513

Open issues

Here is a link to all remaining open tickets.

#3-6, #bundled-theme, #theme, #twentythirteen

Autosave and Post Locking – 3/6

Improved user logout notification ( #23295 ) is now in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., and its UIUI User interface has been tweaked to directly show the login box, rather than prompting first:

expired_login

There’s been discussion as to whether it’s better not to 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. the user’s access to the editor/current page when we detect that you no longer have a login token, since it could stop a user while they’re in the middle of a sentence. Any opinions either way? Feel free to comment either here or on #23295.

A simple way to test the above is by removing your login cookie while working in WordPress (Firebug works well).

On local autosaves, there was a decision to pivot from the previous UXUX User experience posted here, and instead integrate with the new revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. model. This code is still being worked on.

In the land of post locks, @azaozz posted a 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. on #23697, that shows a dialog either when you visit a locked post, or when your post becomes locked. If you are visiting an already locked post, you have the option to break the lock. This is still in need of UX/UI love, but looks like this currently:

post_is_locked_ui

Finally, a patch on #23665 allows for one autosave per user per post, rather than per post, to let us keep an autosave from before you lost a lock. Testing on this, and the rest of the above welcome!

#3-6, #autosave-and-post-locking

Twenty Thirteen project update, March 4 2013

What we worked on last week

Lots of fixes and improvements went in — thanks to everyone who reported and patched and tested.

Bigger items discussed:

1. Fixing the sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. (including discussion of dropping it completely). We decided to just swap primary and secondary sidebars for now. See #23644.
2. Remove fixed navbar for mobile — yes, let’s remove it. See #23647.
3. Keep fixed navbar for desktop for now, but next step is to switch site title to menu there, try that out.

IRCIRC Internet Relay Chat, a network where users can have conversations online. IRC channels are used widely by open source projects, and by WordPress. The primary WordPress channels are #wordpress and #wordpress-dev, on irc.freenode.net. logs: Tue Feb 26 2013 | Thu Feb 28 2013

What we’re doing this week

More work on open tickets.

Big items to tackle next:

  • Post format support: #23619 #23620 #23621
  • Sidebar / footer clearing, still no perfect CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets.-only solution. JSJS JavaScript, a web scripting language typically executed in the browser. Often used for advanced user interfaces and behaviors. techniques are next. See #23557.
  • Gallery styles: portrait sized images, #23649 — and caption styles, #23584.

Non-theme tickets that affect Twenty Thirteen’s progress:

  • #15080: Comment Form Should use HTML5 input types for better accessibilityAccessibility 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)
  • #15081: Search Form should use type=’search’
  • #20088: Improve wp_list_comments() comment markup

Want to get involved?

View open tickets.

Join us in IRC during office hours and we can get you started on a ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. or task.

#3-6, #bundled-theme, #theme, #twentythirteen

Post Formats UI Update, 2/21

First run commit, mostly for soaking of functionality, went into 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. on Monday. This includes fallback output for theme compat and fields in the adminadmin (and super admin). The admin UIUI User interface does not represent anything final – especially of note is the tabs, which are essentially the way they are in order to reuse CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets. and avoid adding temporary code to coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress..

Continue reading

#3-6, #post-formats

Twenty Thirteen project update

The Twenty Thirteen team jumped into 3.6 with two two first office hours this week; things are off to a great start. We’re meeting in #wordpress-dev IRCIRC Internet Relay Chat, a network where users can have conversations online. IRC channels are used widely by open source projects, and by WordPress. The primary WordPress channels are #wordpress and #wordpress-dev, on irc.freenode.net. on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 17 UTC.

Who we are

(These are WP.org usernames.)

  • Leads: lancewillett and obenland
  • Contributors joining us for office hours this week: johnbillion kwight clakeb karmatosed sabreuse taupecat jorbin bpetty MikeHansenMe georgestephanis jayjdk nacin

Many other folks already contributed patches and tickets, thank you.

What we’re working on

Tuesday we started by dividing things up a bit:

  • Color contrast and general accessibilityAccessibility 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) (sabreuse and jorbin)
  • Mobile behavior, the navbar and menu need some work (obenland, johnbillion, and karmatosed)
  • Device testing (karmatosed)
  • General 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. reporting and patches (everyone)

We also looked at open tickets for Twenty Thirteen.

Thursday we had a more open discussion style. Based on people grabbing tasks I’ve added a “point person” in bold after each — if you want to jump in look for “Unassigned” here and drop a comment or pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” me in IRC.

Continue reading

#3-6, #bundled-theme, #theme, #twentythirteen

Revisions Update, 2/19

Following two consecutive days of office hours, we’ve reached a consensus on what the UIUI User interface should be for comparing a single revision to the current version of a post:

comparing-one

Based on the above mockup from @karmatosed, @adamsilverstein is continuing development of the new revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. interface on ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. #23497.

Once we have an acceptable, working prototype, we’ll revisit how to present the interface for comparing two different revisions. @nacin suggested, and we generally agreed, that a single slider with two grabbers would likely be a workable approach, but we’ll discuss that further once the above interface is implemented.

No progress to report on the other tickets scoped for 3.6 as we’ve been focused on UI lately.

[IRC log]

#3-6, #revisions

Dropping Editorial Flow

I’ve decided to drop the Editorial Flow feature from the 3.6 roster. A few things happened. We looked into what the main feature (“forking” a published post and allowing it to be edited then reintegrated) would involve, and found that there were some really fundamental hurdles that were unlikely to be resolved in the time given. A lot of time was spent on the planning stage, and we just kept surfacing more questions. Moreover, because the hurdles were so low-level, they would have required a significant amount of time from a coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. lead like me, @nacin, or @ryan — time that we just didn’t have to give this cycle due to other responsibilities. What that left was #12706 — a somewhat related ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. with a long-running monster 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.. This similarly needed (and still needs) a core lead to dedicate a lot of time to planning, reviewing, and committing it. That might happen, or might not. It didn’t seem fair to keep @danielbachhuber and @kovshenin responsible for something that might or might not make it, subject to other people’s availability.

Though disappointing, this effort wasn’t wasted. We learned a lot about the challenges involved, and we’re better positioned to tackle it in the future with more advance planning and a better understanding of the core team resources that need time dedicated to it.

#3-6

A first draft of the Twenty Thirteen theme…

Screen Shot 2013-02-18 at 5.15.50 PM

A first draft of the Twenty Thirteen theme is now in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., for your inspection and iteration. See: r23452

A demo site is available for you to browse.

@matt set the goals for this theme: a focus on blogging, and great support for post formats (which are getting attention on the backend in 3.6 as well). Under Matt’s guidance, @joen explored the artistic possibilities and was joined by @obenland and @lancewillett in bringing it to fruition.

What you’ll notice first is the colors. Way more use of color than a bundled WordPress theme has had before. Each post format has its own color, so each is distinct, yet they are all complimentary. The bold colors encourage authors to try out all the different formats. This color extends the full width of the window, which breaks your blogblog (versus network, site) up into a lush, segmented timeline. This effect is even more pronounced on mobile browsers, where the screen can be dominated by one or two posts at a time, in all of their chromatic fullness.

On closer inspection, you’ll notice details, like the font-based icons (“Genericons”, by @joen) that scale up to any resolution or zoom level and can be easily recolored using CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets..

You may notice some playful details, like the size-offset pagination arrows:

Screen Shot 2013-02-18 at 4.52.23 PM

Or the 404 page (which I’ll leave to you to find).

One of the goals of having a new theme every year was to give ourself room to experiment. That hasn’t really happened. We’ve been far too conservative, trying to make themes that work reasonably well for everyone, but don’t push boundaries too much. That changes with Twenty Thirteen. It’s hard not to have a strong feeling about the theme, one way or another. It defies you to give it a shrug or a kurt nod. Some of you will hate it. And that’s okay. We’ll still be shipping Twenty Twelve, which is an excellent base theme and a canvas on which you can build anything from a blog to a static content site. But with Twenty Thirteen we’re taking a bold stance: this theme was meant for blogging, and it’s not a blank canvas. It comes pre-marinated with playfulness and warmth and opinions.

Twenty Thirteen really prefers a single column layout. Widgets live best in the footer, where jQuery Masonry bricks them together (but it supports a sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme., if you really insist). HeaderHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. images have a fixed width and height, and will be cropped at smaller resolutions, so the best choice is an artistic header where not 100% needs to be shown all the time (it ships with three).

Now that we have a first draft of Twenty Thirteen in core, it’s time to start iterating and sanding off some of the rough edges. AccessibilityAccessibility 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) is still important, even when making bold artistic statements, and I’d be surprised if we didn’t have work to do there. We’ll need testing on lots of different browsers and platforms, and with lots of different plugins. @helen‘s Post Format UIUI User interface team will need to give feedback on upgrading Twenty Thirteen to use the new post format 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. functions that are available.

@lancewillett and @obenland will be holding Twenty Thirteen office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1700 UTC. Interested parties should make an effort to attend and help us get this beauty ready for betaBeta 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.!

#3-6, #bundled-theme, #theme, #twentythirteen

Revisions Update, 2/18

We’ve scheduled an additional office hours for Tuesday, February 19, at 2000 UTC in #wordpress-dev.

During today’s meeting, we reviewed @adamsilverstein’s prototype on #23497, which led to a lengthy discussion about how the prototype related to our mockups, specifically https://core.trac.wordpress.org/attachment/ticket/23396/revisions9.png.

@karmatosed will prepare a revised mockup for tomorrow that incorporates the slider introduced in #23497, and @adamsilverstein will tweak the prototype as well so that comparing a revision to the current version is the default behaviour.

The feeling is that we’re straying from our intended goals, and I didn’t want to wait until our Thursday office hours to refocus. After tomorrow’s meeting, I’ll post a more detailed recap of where the RevisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. team stands.

[IRC log]

#3-6, #revisions