Design meeting notes July 8

These are the weekly notes for the design meeting that happens on Wednesdays. You can read the full transcript on our Slack channel and find the meeting’s agenda here. You can join the SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel by following the instructions in our handbook.

First up, housekeeping. We are always inviting members to be part of our note taking and triage team, if you are interested, leave a comment!

Next, @michael-arestad brings us GutenbergGutenberg 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/ updates. Version 8.5.0 has been released today! It is the last release going into WordPress 5.5. It’s packed with features including:

  • New 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. editor design
  • Block Patterns – nice work @nrqsnchz
  • Expanded Design tools
  • Better Drag and Drop
  • Possibility to upload external images on image blocks
  • 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): Allow disabling arrow navigation across blocks
  • Anchor support added into most static blocks
  • Over 1500 “editor experience” improvements.

What’s next in Gutenberg? Here’s a post from @annezazu that’s worth some of your time. In progress work:

This is just a handful the items representing the work being done. If you’re interested, check out the Task Coordination messages in today’s #core-editor meeting. Look into the work in progress to see where you can give some feedback or ask questions if something is not clear, it will help designers to develop better components and blocks for us to have more fun with Gutenberg.

@noahrshrader is working on our Figma libraries. A post about this effort went up a few days ago, and a new Figma library file is being set up here. As you browse the library, you’ll notice green dots next to component names. Green indicates that it’s ready for use. Everyone is encouraged to hop into the file and take a look around. Feel free to leave comments in Figma and we’ll be happy to address/resolve.

The docs team would like feedback on the new external linking policy draft for commercial blogs.

@sageshilling is working on a Media Library image tray for this ticket that she would like feedback on. A lot of good points were discussed during the meeting already, but if you have more you can leave your comments in this doc.

That’s all for this week, quite an update! Remember we have CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. triage on Mondays and Gutenberg triage on Tuesdays in the same Slack channel.