This post summarizes the weekly editor chat meeting on Wednesday, 9 December 2020, 14:00 UTC held in Slack.
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/ 9.5.1
We had a 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. to fix three bugs. The details of the fixes can be checked in the release page.
WordPress 5.6
WordPress 5.6 was recently released, more details can be found here.
The release contains several enhancements to the editor. @isabel_brison made an overview post with the changes https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/12/03/wordpress-5-6-core-editor-overview/.
Besides the editor enhancements, the 2021 theme is also a big step. It will have an equivalent block 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. version that will test how robust is FSE and Global Styles to allow third-party themes.
@youknowriad said: Nice work @isabel_brison and others leading the editor side of the release. And the message was well supported on the chat using slack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. reactions. Thank you for all the work made leading the editor side of this release @isabel_brison!!
Monthly Plan and key project updates.
Widget 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. and Customizer 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. screen
Widgets and customizer screen are still continuing with explorations going on to find the best way to add blocks support in customizer.
Global Styles
We merged an update that makes client preset metadata match the server. ” – https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/27453. And now we are also not passing some metadata to the client like selectors https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/27449.
The work to make theme.json 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. translatable continues.
We are making some changes, namely removing some presets we are not totally convinced yet they should exist.
We already have some traction on the work to enhance our components to allow a better UX User experience on Global Styles; @q proposed the addition of some utils.
We also have some progress on the Global Styles extensibility with some filters being proposed https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/27509.
Full site editing
The Query block now inherits the global query so FSE themes can add a query block in the index or archive templates and it will work for all archives, properly getting the query context from the visitor’s URL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/27128.
Template-parts now have a UI User interface to select the HTML HyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. element that will be used for their wrapper: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/27101 so they can define easier if it’s, etc.
The inserter was also improved and behaves as popover. The editor now has an outline mode used in both Site Editor and Template mode.
Native Mobile APP Updates
- File block merged and usable.
- Post’s Save dialog fixes.
- Background and text color support in Group, Paragraph and Quote blocks
- Use new link picker in various blocks: Button, Image, Gallery
- Improvements on Separator block style
- E2E tests execution improvement.
- Release process documentation improvements.
An app release is going to be skipped because of New Year’s and people taking holidays on these days.
Task Coordination
Helped a bit with 5.6 Q&A docs, light GH triage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors., continued working with @noisysocks on updating the features page and updating the issue templates, worked on FSE program preparation (including adding a welcome bot there and digging into current/recently merged PRs!), and dug in a bit to block directory adoption. Plans to do much of the same in the week ahead!.
Continued the efforts of improving the Component System for Gutenberg.
The latest update is a (draft) pull-request to bring in the UI libraries/systems Has been working on (aka. “G2 Components”) https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/27594. @itsjonq gave a thank you to @youknowriad and @gziolo for thoughts/guidance on integration.
@itsjonq said that t’s just the beginning, but it’s looking very promising. As always, @itsjonq tries Livestream design/dev updates on Twitch several times a week.
@itsjonq is also posting weekly updates on the project blog (versus network, site):
https://g2components.wordpress.com/.
Design triaged Bigger font for various handbooks.
Worked on several documentation tasks namely: Improving the intro page of the Block Editor Handbook and Re-examining introduction tutorials.
Has been on working on some follow-ups to the addition of the “template mode” in the post editor.
The idea is that as we add features and enhancements, the code base becomes more complex as we take shortcuts so it’s important to circle back and “clean” the code a bit. Has been doing that with some a11y 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) hooks 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., extracting common components and removing unnecessary complexity. Still has a few follow-ups planned. Some refactorings and some more features.
Worked on an update that makes client preset metadata match the server. And another one that makes sure we are not passing some metadata to the client like selectors.
Did multiple reviews on Global Styles related work.
Proposed a solution to remove some of the presets we have being back-compatible with markup that uses them.
For the next week, plans on helping the effort to improve our WordPress components with PR reviews comments, feedback, etc. Wants to merge the Gutenberg side of theme.json i18n 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. and iterate and merge the typography presets removal. Also plans on making some progress on the design tooling visibility issue.
Would like to help with the Gutenberg documentation.
For next week his main focus will be splitting core block assets loading and revisit progressive loading for FSE.
Would also love it if we could focus on removing auto-drafts for theme-provided templates but that one is a bit tricky as it touches lots of things.
Open floor
@bph bring to the attention of the participants of the chat an issue/question https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/27321. @youknowriad shared some guesses of what may be the cause of the issue and @ntsekouras offered to followup and share his findings on the issue.
Skipping core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. editor chats of 23rd and 30th December
@paaljoachim share the following in the agenda:
I suggest that we skip having a Core Editor meeting the 23rd and 30th December as many will be having their Christmas holiday
People discussed this suggestion, there was no opposition to this suggestion so participants of the chat decided to skip the chats of 23rd and 30th December.
Starting the FSE Outreach Program
@annezazu said the following:
After digging into some recent FSE related PRs and talking with a few people, I wanted to raise the idea of starting the #fse-outreach-experiment after the next Gutenberg release. I think this PR from @youknowriad on a template editing mode is a great place to start but wanted to hear thoughts. Right now though, there aren’t a ton of things lined up to do next. I think this will be okay though as it’ll give an extended period of time for people to test (might be good with this time of year) and it’ll make it easier to tweak what we’re doing after this first round. How does that sound to you all? P.S. I welcome people flagging possible additional things to run through for the group. I try my best to stay on top of things but definitely miss stuff.
@youknowriad shared he agrees that the template editing mode is a good flow to test. He believe the feature in itself is still a little bit rough around the edges but testable.
@annezazu supported riad’s thoughts and concluded that she will get to work fleshing out the details to kick off the program. She welcomes any collaborators who might be interested!
For anyone reading this summary, you can be a part of the program by joining #fse-outreach-experiment channel.
One week RC 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
@youknowriad said:
The last releases saw a couple bugs being introduced and to address that I’d like us to discuss the possibility to try a one week RC in Gutenberg 9.6.
The participants of the chat showed support for this idea. The plan is to start having a one week RC period. The next release will still follow the normal schedule, so we give more time of notice to allow publishing the notes of the meeting (this post), and we have a fuller release otherwise it would be just a one-week release which would be very small.
#block-editor, #chats, #core-editor, #core-editor-summary, #gutenberg, #meeting-notes