Dev Chat Agenda for May 24th (4.8 week 4)

This is the agenda for the weekly dev meeting on May 24, 2017 at 20:00 UTC:

  • 4.8 timing
  • 4.8 bug scrubs
  • 4.8 dev notes / field guideField guide The field guide is a type of blogpost published on Make/Core during the release candidate phase of the WordPress release cycle. The field guide generally lists all the dev notes published during the beta cycle. This guide is linked in the about page of the corresponding version of WordPress, in the release post and in the HelpHub version page.
  • Dev needed to help draft About page: Under the Hood section
  • General announcements

If you have anything to propose to add to the agenda or specific items related to the above, please leave a comment below. See you there!

#4-8, #agenda, #core, #dev-chat

Addition of TinyMCE to the Text Widget

Update: A follow-up post has been published regarding Fixes to Text widget and introduction of Custom HTML widget in 4.8.1.

In its first couple years, WordPress lacked rich/visual text editing. Before TinyMCE was incorporated in WordPress 2.0, users had to edit post content as raw HTML with some support from the Quicktags buttons. When widgets were introduced in WordPress 2.2, the Text widget was included which allowed a user to add content to their sidebar. Nevertheless, unlike the post editor, the Text widget did not incorporate TinyMCE, nor did it include Quicktags. For twelve years, since TinyMCE was added to core in 2005, users have had to hack around with HTML in their Text widgets to do things as simple as make text bold or add links. This has been featured even as recently as the 4.7 release video. Well, as of WordPress 4.8, the Text widget is finally getting the same treatment as the post editor with the introduction of TinyMCE for visual text editing, while still supporting raw HTML editing via a Text tab but now with the additional help of Quicktags:

Text widget: visual tab Text widget: text (HTML) tab

A primary reason for the long delay in incorporating TinyMCE into the Text widget was the difficulty of cleanly instantiating another copy of the WordPress visual editor dynamically after the page has loaded. Since WordPress 3.3 there has been the wp_editor() PHP function for instantiating an editor for the initial page load, but there was no facility for instantiating editors afterward, such as when adding a new Text widget to a sidebar. So in #35760 a new JS API was introduced for dynamically instantiating WP editors on the page: wp.editor.initialize(). This JS API is used for the new TinyMCE-powered Text widget; for more, please see Editor API changes in 4.8.

Note that by default the Text widget only features buttons for bold, italic, unordered list, ordered list, and link. If you want to add additional buttons to the toolbar, you may use a plugin to enqueue the following JS to add the blockquote button, for example:

jQuery( document ).on( 'tinymce-editor-setup', function( event, editor ) {
	if ( editor.settings.toolbar1 && -1 === editor.settings.toolbar1.indexOf( 'blockquote' ) ) {
		editor.settings.toolbar1 += ',blockquote';
	}
});

Likewise, a custom button can be added via code like:

jQuery( document ).on( 'tinymce-editor-setup', function( event, editor ) {
	editor.settings.toolbar1 += ',mybutton';
	editor.addButton( 'mybutton', {
		text: 'My button',
		icon: false,
		onclick: function () {
			editor.insertContent( 'Text from my button' );
		}
	});
});

A reason for why there is no “Add Media” button for the editor in the Text widget is that WordPress 4.8 also includes dedicated media widgets for adding images, video, and audio to sidebars. Another reason is a current technical limitation whereby arbitrary media embeds (oEmbeds) fail to work properly outside the context of post content (see #34115). For this reason if you try to embed a video or something else by pasting in a URL it will not currently expand into the embedded content. The same is true for shortcodes: they are not processed by default since many shortcodes presuppose a global $post as the context within which they expect to be running. Plugins may opt-in selectively to support individual shortcodes by filtering widget_text as they have had to do for many years now.

While not supporting shortcodes, the updated Text widget does have some of the same filters applying to it as the_content, in particular:

  • wpautop
  • wptexturize
  • capital_P_dangit
  • convert_smilies

The Text widget has supported a “filter” instance property which was reflected in the UI via a checkbox for whether or not to automatically add paragraphs and line break tags (wpautop). For the updated Text widget, this checkbox is removed entirely in favor of aligning its behavior with the post editor where this behavior is always enabled. These filters only apply on Text widgets that have been updated/touched after the 4.8 upgrade. When a Text widget is modified in 4.8, the filter instance prop gets set to a static string “content both the filter instance property and a new visual property will be set to true and then it will apply a new widget_text_content filter which then apply the above functions to the widget text. For Text widgets created prior to 4.8, they will be opened in a legacy mode with the old behavior when it is determined that TinyMCE could mutate the content undesirably; such legacy instances will be saved with visual=false instance property. Read more about Fixes to Text widget and introduction of Custom HTML widget in 4.8.1.

Important: When pasting HTML into the “Text” (HTML) tab of the Text widget, any extraneous line breaks should be removed or else unwanted paragraphs and line beaks may result. This is particularly important when you paste in script or style tags (as in the case of 3rd-party JavaScript embeds), since auto-inserted paragraphs will cause script errors; this will be fixed in #2833. This behavior aligns with longstanding behavior in the post editor, so it is not new, although it does differ from how the Text widget has previously behaved. As noted above, for previously-existing Text widgets that had the “auto-add paragraphs” checkbox unchecked (and thus the filter instance prop set to false), the previous behavior of not doing wpautop will be maintained: only once the widgets are modified will any extraneous line breaks need to be removed. Any such Text widgets created prior to 4.8 will be go into a legacy mode as of 4.8.1 to prevent any data loss. Going forward, arbitrary HTML should be placed into the new Custom HTML widget instead.

The incorporation of TinyMCE into the Text widget has necessitated constructing the widget’s form fields differently than how they are normally done. Widgets in core have historically utilized static HTML for their control form fields. Every time a user hits “Save” the form fields get sent in an Ajax request which passes them to the WP_Widget::update() method and then the Ajax response sends back the output of WP_Widget::form() which then replaces the entire form. (Note widgets in the Customizer behave differently since there is no Save button in the widget, as updates are synced and previewed as changes are made; read more about Live Widget Previews.) This worked for static HTML forms in the past, but TinyMCE is a JavaScript component. To avoid having to rebuild TinyMCE every time the user hits Save on the admin screen, the Text widget puts the title field and TinyMCE text field outside of the container that is “managed” by the server which gets replaced with each save. (A similar approach has also been employed by the new media widgets in 4.8.) The fields in the Text widget’s UI sync with hidden inputs which get synchronized with the server; in the Customizer, changes to the TinyMCE field will be previewed after 1 second with denouncing. The container for the Text widget’s fields is .text-widget-fields and the traditional container for a widget’s input fields as rendered by WP_Widget::form() is .widget-content:

Themes should already account for the most common HTML elements within the text widgets and provide appropriate styles for them—the addition of the editor toolbar increases the likelihood its elements will be used in the future. Most default themes needed additional styles for ordered and unordered lists within widgets, so theme authors are encouraged to double-check their themes and test them with content in the text widget that includes markup provided by the editor toolbar.

Initial groundwork for shimming JavaScript into widgets was added in 3.9 via the widget-added and widget-updated events. A more recent proposal for making JavaScript more of a first class citizen in widgets can be found in #33507 and the media widgets incorporate some of its patterns that were also prototyped in the JS Widgets plugin. The synchronization of a widget’s state (instance properties) via hidden text fields can be eliminated once a widget’s state can be fully represented in a JavaScript model.

The Text widget is implemented as a Backbone.js view which is available at wp.textWidgets.TextWidgetControl. Instances of this view are then stored in the wp.textWidgets.widgetControls object. The widget’s control JS will only instantiate for a given widget once it is first expanded, when the widget-added event fires. What’s more is that the widget will only first initialize once the container is fully expanded since TinyMCE is not able to initialize properly inside of a container that is animating. In order to capture when TinyMCE inside the Text widget is initialized, you should use a TinyMCE event like tinymce-editor-setup. Note also that due the Document Object Model, when a widget is moved to a new location in a sidebar and this the TinyMCE iframe is moved in the DOM, this dynamically-created iframe is reloaded and thus emptied out. For this reason, every time a Text widget is moved to a new location the TinyMCE editor in the widget will be removed and then re-initialized. Keep this in mind when extending.

Keep also in mind that the Text widget will likely undergo many more changes with the incorporation of the Gutenberg editor, and that widgets themselves will likely see many changes to align with Gutenberg’s editor blocks which are now being prototyped.

#4-8, #dev-notes, #editor, #widgets

Multisite Focused Changes in 4.8

Here’s an overview of the developer facing changes made in multisitemultisite Used to describe a WordPress installation with a network of multiple blogs, grouped by sites. This installation type has shared users tables, and creates separate database tables for each blog (wp_posts becomes wp_0_posts). See also network, blog, site for the 4.8 cycle. If you’re interested in more detail, checkout the full list of tickets.

New capabilities

As part of the goal to remove all calls to is_super_admin() in favor of capability checks, two new 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. capabilities have been introduced in this release:
  • upgrade_network is used to determine whether a user can access the Networknetwork (versus site, blog) Upgrade page in the network adminadmin (and super admin). Related to this, the capability is also checked to determine whether to show the notice that a network upgrade is required. The capability is not mapped, so it is only granted to network administrators. See #39205 for background discussion.
  • setup_network is used to determine whether a user can setup multisite, i.e. access the Network Setup page. Before setting up a multisite, the capability is mapped to the manage_options capability, so that it is granted to administrators. Once multisite is setup, it is mapped to manage_network_options, so that it is granted to network administrators. See #39206 for background discussion.
Both capabilities work in a backward-compatible fashion, so no changes should be required in plugins that deal with those areas. The capabilities however allow more fine-grained control about access to their specific areas. As an additional reminder: Usage of is_super_admin(), while not throwing a notice, is discouraged. If you need to check whether a network administrator has access to specific functionality in your pluginPlugin 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, use one of the existing network capabilities or a custom capability. See #37616 for the ongoing task.

New HooksHooks In WordPress theme and development, hooks are functions that can be applied to an action or a Filter in WordPress. Actions are functions performed when a certain event occurs in WordPress. Filters allow you to modify certain functions. Arguments used to hook both filters and actions look the same.

  • deleted_blog fires after a site has been deleted. See #25584
  • signup_site_meta filters site meta in wpmu_signup_blog(). See #39223
  • signup_user_meta filters user meta in wpmu_signup_user(). See #39223
  • minimum_site_name_length filters the minimum number of characters that can be used for new site signups. See #39676

Network-specific site and user count control

With WordPress 4.8, several functions related to network site and user counts now support an additional $network_id parameter that allows to read and update those counts on a different network than the current one. While this mostly increases general flexibility, the new parameter can be leveraged to fix inconsistencies, for example prior to 4.8 the creation of a new site on another network would falsely trigger a recalculation of the current network instead of the network being actually modified. See #38699 for the 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. ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. and resulting task. The functions that now support a $network_id parameter are:
  • get_blog_count(). See #37865.
  • get_user_count(). See #37866.
  • wp_update_network_site_counts(). See #37528.
  • wp_update_network_user_counts(). See #40349.
  • wp_update_network_counts(). See #40386.
  • wp_maybe_update_network_site_counts(). See #40384.
  • wp_maybe_update_network_user_counts(). See #40385.
  • wp_is_large_network(). The filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. wp_is_large_network now passes the network ID as fourth parameter as well. See #40489.

#4-8, #dev-notes, #multisite

Removal of core embedding support for WMV and WMA file formats

With the introduction of the video widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. (#39994) and audio widget (#39995) it was discovered that the WMV and WMA file formats are no longer supported by MediaElement.js as of v3. While coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. is currently shipping with MediaElement.js v2.22, these file formats only play if the Silverlight pluginPlugin 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 is installed, something which is less and less common since the plugin is no longer supported as of Chrome 45 and as of Firefox 52. So with the planned upgrade of MediaElement.js from 2.22 to 4.x (see #39686), it is a good time with the WP 4.8 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. to remove support for the formats. This has been done in [40813] for #40819.

Plugins may continue to add embedding support for these file formats by re-adding them via the wp_video_extensions and wp_audio_extensions filters, for example:

function add_wmv_to_wp_video_extensions( $extensions ) {
    $extensions[] = 'wmv';
    return $extensions;
}
add_filter( 'wp_video_extensions', 'add_wmv_to_wp_video_extensions' );

function add_wma_to_wp_audio_extensions( $extensions ) {
    $extensions[] = 'wma';
    return $extensions;
}
add_filter( 'wp_audio_extensions', 'add_wma_to_wp_audio_extensions' );

Plugins would also need to implement fallback rendering routines via the wp_video_shortcode_override and wp_audio_shortcode_override filters, or else use a different library than MediaElement.js altogether via the wp_video_shortcode_library and wp_audio_shortcode_library filters.

Note that there is no functional difference before and after the removal of WMA and WMV support. When MediaElement.js doesn’t support a format, it displays a download link. Before and after [40813], the following is ho  the audio and video shortcodes look like with WMA and WMV files respectively:

In the adminadmin (and super admin), the functional difference is that these formats are not listed as being available for selection in the Video and Audio widgets. Additionally, when you Add Media in the post editor, there is now no option to embed the player for these formats; only a link to the media will be provided, just as when attempting to add non-media files to content.

#4-8, #core-media, #dev-notes, #mediaelement

Editor API changes in 4.8

A new editor 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. was added in #35760. It makes it possible to dynamically instantiate the editor from JSJS JavaScript, a web scripting language typically executed in the browser. Often used for advanced user interfaces and behaviors.. There are two parts to it:

  • All editor related scripts and stylesheets have to be enqueued from PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher by using wp_enqueue_editor().
  • Initialization is left for the script that is adding the editor instance. It requires the textarea that will become the Text editor tab to be already created and not hidden in the DOM. Filtering of the settings is done on adding the editor instance from JS.

There are three new methods added to the wp.editor namespace:

  • wp.editor.initialize()
  • wp.editor.remove()
  • wp.editor.getContent()

(See wp-admin/js/editor.js for more info.)

The default WordPress settings are passed to the initialize() method automatically, and can be overridden by passing a settings object on initialization, similarly to using wp_editor() in PHP.

In addition there are several custom jQuery events that are fired at different stages during initialization:

  • wp-before-tinymce-init is fired before initialization and can be used to set or change any editor setting. It passes the settings object.
  • tinymce-editor-setup is fired after initialization has started but before the UIUI User interface is constructed. It passes the editor instance object.
  • tinymce-editor-init is fired when the TinyMCE instance is ready (same as the init event in TinyMCE).

Here’s an example of how to add few of the default TinyMCE buttons to the toolbar:

jQuery( document ).on( 'tinymce-editor-setup', function( event, editor ) {
	editor.settings.toolbar1 += ',alignleft,aligncenter,alignright';
});

Here is another example of how to add a custom button:

jQuery( document ).on( 'tinymce-editor-setup', function( event, editor ) {
	editor.settings.toolbar1 += ',mybutton';

	editor.addButton( 'mybutton', {
		text: 'My button2',
		icon: false,
		onclick: function () {
			editor.insertContent("It's my button!");
		}
	});
});

For more information please see the TinyMCE documentation.

Update: there were four “private event hacks” in the default imagepluginPlugin 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 left over from the initial TinyMCE 4.0 implementation back in WordPress 3.9. These hacks were also removed as that plugin has changed significantly in the latest TinyMCE version.

#4-8, #editor, #tinymce

Dev Chat Summary: May 17th (4.8 week 3)

This post summarizes the dev chat meeting from May 17th (agendaSlack archive).

4.7.5 Release

  • 4.7.5 was released; six security issues and three maintenance fixes, thanks to everyone who pitched in to get that out!

4.8 Timing

  • Beta 1 went out on Friday, May 12th
  • Beta 2 is due out this Friday, May 19th; potentially shepherded by @matias between 16:00 and 18:00 UTC
  • Please plan anything important before 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. 2 in by Thursday evening, May 18th

4.8 Bug Scrubs

4.8 Dev Notesdev 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. / Field GuideField guide The field guide is a type of blogpost published on Make/Core during the release candidate phase of the WordPress release cycle. The field guide generally lists all the dev notes published during the beta cycle. This guide is linked in the about page of the corresponding version of WordPress, in the release post and in the HelpHub version page.

  • So far, a single Dev Note has been published
  • Goal is to have them all done ASAP so we can assemble the Field Guide by RC1
  • Remaining Dev Notes to get published:
    • 1) Editor: TinyMCE inline element / link boundaries – @iseulde & @azaozz
    • 2) Editor: TinyMCE version 4.6 – @iseulde & @azaozz
    • 3) Editor: Edge fixes – @iseulde & @azaozz
    • 4) Customize: Media widgets (#32417) – @westonruter
    • 5) Customize: Visual text widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. (#35243) – @westonruter
    • 6) Multi-site – @jeremyfelt
    • 7) Changes to headings in WP Adminadmin (and super admin)@afercia

Location identification in Events widget

  • Dashboard widget can be tested via Nearby WordPress Events plugin
  • Geolocation database licensing issues tracked in #2823-meta
  • Example coverage of radius maps
  • Will work through UXUX User experience regressionregression A software bug that breaks or degrades something that previously worked. Regressions are often treated as critical bugs or blockers. Recent regressions may be given higher priorities. A "3.6 regression" would be a bug in 3.6 that worked as intended in 3.5. and accept a11yAccessibility 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) regression via #40735 in Beta 2

General announcements

  • Anything outside Customize, Editor, 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/., and CLICLI Command Line Interface. Terminal (Bash) in Mac, Command Prompt in Windows, or WP-CLI for WordPress. has lower priority focus in 2017
  • Major work on other components will likely not be merged or considered

#4-8, #core, #dev-chat, #summary

4.8 Bug Scrubs for RC 1

The following 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. scrubs will help us drop to 0 tickets in the 4.8 milestone by RC1 on Thursday, May 25th:

Reminder that Thursday, May 25th is 4.8 Release Candidate 1.

As a refresher, here’s a post from the 4.7 release cycle answering questions about bug scrubs.

#4-8, #bug-scrub

Cleaner headings in the admin screens

One of the most common needs 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) is providing tools to effectively navigate through content. Users of assistive technologies use headings as the predominant mechanism for finding page information. Headings provide document structure. Assistive technologies can list all the headings in a page to help users navigate and jump to different sections, like in a table of contents. For this reason, headings should contain just the heading text.

For a number of years, the main headings in the adminadmin (and super admin) screens have been used to contain extraneous content, most notably the “Add new” button. WordPress 4.8 aims to fix this.

This is a continuation of the work started in 4.3 on restoring the H1 (heading level 1) to the admin screens and continued in 4.4 with the introduction of a better headings hierarchy.

What pluginPlugin 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 or theme authors should know

If your plugin or theme follows the previous WordPress pattern of adding extraneous content to the main heading, please update your plugin or theme to make the heading cleaner. All you need to do is move the extraneous content outside of the heading. WordPress 4.8 ships with new CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets. rules to take care of the new markup structure and in most cases, no additional changes will be required.

Of course, it’s impossible to cover all edge cases. If your plugin or theme uses additional content in the area next to the admin screens main heading, please double check now and be prepared to upgrade your markup and CSS to account for the cleaner headings. The relevant area is highlighted in the screenshot below and it applies to almost all the admin screens.

example of a main heading in the admin screens

Need more details?

If you need more details about the markup and CSS changes, please do have a look at the tracking ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. #26601 and the first changeset [38983], followed by several other ones all listed in the main ticket.

Get ahead of 4.8 and update now!

The power of the Web is in its universality. Help us to make the Web a place designed to work for all people. Any feedback and thoughts are more than welcome, please let us know in the comments below.

#4-8, #accessibility, #dev-notes

Dev Chat Agenda for May 17th (4.8 week 3)

This is the agenda for the weekly dev meeting on May 17, 2017 at 20:00 UTC:

  • 4.7.5 security and maintenance release
  • 4.8 timing
  • 4.8 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. scrubs
  • 4.8 dev notesdev 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. / field guideField guide The field guide is a type of blogpost published on Make/Core during the release candidate phase of the WordPress release cycle. The field guide generally lists all the dev notes published during the beta cycle. This guide is linked in the about page of the corresponding version of WordPress, in the release post and in the HelpHub version page.
  • Review: location identification in events widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user.
  • General announcements

If you have anything to propose to add to the agenda or specific items related to the above, please leave a comment below. See you there!

#4-8, #agenda, #core, #dev-chat

Customizer sidebar width is now variable

A common request for the CustomizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. has been to grant more room for the controls that appear in its 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.. Ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. #32296 was created to allow the sidebar pane to be user-resizable with a grabber just like the Dev Tools pane in Chrome can be resized. After a lot of back and forth, the scope was reduced to remove the user-resizable aspect and to instead address a more fundamental issue that the sidebar is exceedingly and unnecessarily narrow on high-resolution displays. So while 4.8 doesn’t include a user-resizable controls pane, there is still a feature plugin for possible future merge. Important to that end, the changes that have been merged begin to introduce the fundamental prerequisite for a variable-width sidebar pane: responsive controls.

As can be seen in [40511] and [40567], no longer should Customizer controls assume that their container will always be 300px wide. Given the new responsive breakpoints for high-resolution screens, the pane can now be between 300px and 600px wide depending on the screen width. And actually this has already been the case on smaller screens (e.g. mobile) where the preview and pane aren’t shown at the same time; it now also applies to very large screens where there is ample space for both the preview and a wider pane.

Custom controls in plugins and themes should utilize alternative approaches to doing layout than using pixel widths. Use of percentage-based widths or flexbox will help ensure that controls will appear properly in larger displays, while also making controls future-compatible when the sidebar width could be user-resizable.

#4-8, #customize, #dev-notes