Dev chat summary: May 12, 2021

@lukecarbis and @jeffpaul led the 0500 UTC devchat and 2000 UTC devchats, respectively, on this agenda.

Here’s a combined summary from those discussions …

Highlights from blogblog (versus network, site) posts

In short order, the standout posts of the week are:

While the group opened browser tabs and bookmarked those posts, the chat moved on to …

Upcoming releases

A schedule reminder for 5.8: Feature Freeze is coming in 13 days (ed. note: at this writing, twelve) on Tuesday, May 25th. Per the published schedule, that means no commits for new enhancements or feature requests for the last two weeks 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. 1. Instead, the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. team will focus on bugs during that period.

To that end, @lukecarbis and @chaion07 have published the bug-scrub schedule. If you’d like to add a scrub, you can — whether you’re a developer or not, whether you’re already a contributor or not! And it gets you official props as a Core contributor to 5.8. (Ed. note: You are also free to tailor your scrub to the tickets, issues, and features that matter most to you. It is, quite literally, your scrub.)

There’s also a new(ish) kind of scrub called a testing scrub. If you’d like to get ready to help with those, here’s a handy how-to guide from @boniu91.

@helen reminded the group that 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.-based 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. editor needs a lot more testing.

Details on the Marketing plans for 5.8 are noted in the Full Site Editing Pre-Merge Overview post, if you’re interested in helping out there please consider attending Marketing meetings which are held every Wednesday at 14:00 UTC.

Components check-in and status updates.

For more details on any change, check the ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. that makes the commit. You’ll get the all the conversation about the issue, what changed and why, and — of course — the patches and screenshots that took the change from concept to commit, all in one place.

@sergeybiryukov:

  • Ticket #53101 updates the Requests library to version 1.8.0, making it a lot faster to use cURL.
  • Ticket #50105 pulls infinite scrolling out of the Media Library and replaces that feature with a Load More button that the user controls (accessibly!)
  • Also in Media, ticket #35725 brings WebP image-format support to Core.
  • No major news this week on Build/Test Tools, Date/Time, General, 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., or Permalinks.

@audrasjb:

@marybaum checked in on Help/About. There’s no major news right now, but that component gets very busy starting at feature freeze.

Open Floor

@markparnell has 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 #49278 that’s passing unit tests, looking for review in hopes of landing in 5.8; @peterwilsoncc likes the approach of improving DQ query performance and feels it needs to be an early ticket but unsure if we’re still early in the 5.8 cycle for it to be considered; @lukecarbis noted some dev-feedback from someone experienced with SQL would help

@christos12 raised a concern about removing infinite scroll from the Media Library possibly surprising some users. A brief discussion followed, with @desrosj weighing in on the Load More button and @davidbaumwald noting that he has written a plugin that will let a user restore Infinite Scroll.

In a late-breaking comment on the devchat agenda, @paaljoachim asked the group for recommended resources on WordPress 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 design (not development or information design, but visual design). @jeffpaul suggested the Plugin Handbook; a little later, @megphillips91 recommended this guide to plugin UI in the block editor.

Props to @jeffpaul for reviewing this post.

#5-8, #core-css, #core-media, #dev-chat, #hosting, #mobile, #openverse, #summary