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This is a summary for the design Show and Tell meeting that happens the last Wednesday of every month. This meeting took place on Wednesday 25 August 2021 via Zoom. Transcript is below the video.
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Summary of topics
@estelaris announced that she would like to step down as team repTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts..
@joen inform us about an issue with the Figma library and he created a backup of 300+ components that had not been updated in a while.
@javiarce talked about his explorations on the color UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. for the inspector.
@ibdz asked about the WordPress blue color, is it time to start a conversation to change it to the new blue color proposed by the #core-css team.
@estelaris: Recording. Okay. Hello everybody. I want to welcome you all to the show and tell for the design team for the month of August. It’s our last one for this summer. Um, and it’s open for everybody. Um, that is just, uh, one announcement I want to make on this meeting. Um, I would like to step down as design team rep. So, uh, I want all of you to start thinking if somebody else wants to step up, uh, probably going to announce it and make it like, like official on the Make blog around, you know, mid September, something like that. So I can give people time to think about it. And, um, thank you Ann. And, uh, yeah, well, whoever wants to step up, we’re going to make. The way we do it, you know, in the design team is, um, I make a post to announce that I’m going to retire and then I will, and then we open another post, uh, for, um, people to nominate people who want, who we would like to be the rep. And then we vote on that post and then would just on the next show and tell, but just say, who is going to be our new team rep.
And then that will just be around to, to help you out just to see if you need me. You don’t need me. It’s always great. That’s okay. But I think it’s been like, I’m almost two years, so I think it’s time for somebody else to, to come up and do it because whenever we have a new rep in like the entire, um, team, you know, everything moves around and everything works different.
And I think that, you know, if the same person staystoo long. The teams get stuck in and, you know, everything comes, turns into a monotony and all that stuff. So I don’t like that. I like to, I like change. I like to give everybody a chance and, um, because we all have great ideas and we all have different ways of, uh, talking about, uh, leading the teams and talking with the team and, integrating everybody.
And that’s what I want. So whoever wants to, I will, I will pause probably by mid-September just so you know, given, given everybody a chance to come back from holiday from summer holidays and everything, and once we just kind of settle, then I’ll make I’ll announce it. Okay. So whoever wants to start thinking about it. And with that let’s open the, the, um, room for everybody who wants or who has something to show us today who’s been working on, um, things or, um, Joen? Is Joen with us?
Or Javier, uh, Joen either one of you, you want tells us what happened with Figma today? Just so everyone knows. Yeah. So everybody knows and, uh, and we make it official and, and, and, and explain what happened while we have and how we’re going to move forward. Yep.
@joen: I’m happy to talk about it as well. So we have this beautiful, wonderful Figma, uh, WordPress design library file, which is used by quite a lot of people now and has quite a few people editing as well. And there was an edit made, I don’t know, particularly what that edit was. It could potentially be completely harmless, but after that one edit, whatever it was, it wasn’t immediately visually apparent what had been done. 347 components were ready to be published with changes, which sort of set off the smoke alarm.
So it’s big because usually one or two gets updated and you can write a little change log. So I stepped through the edit history and restored the version that did not have 347 changes. And of course I took a backup of the file before. So if you made any changes after July 27th, you can find those in the backup.
It’s in the wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ organization Figma. It’s, it’s just called August, uh, backup. You can copy it over and you can publish. So the Figma files are all good again. And, um, please of course be mindful of the edits you make, but of course, every, all of those with edit rights, we all make mistakes as well. I’ve made a couple. Just undo and all that stuff, but, um, just make your changes, publish, and then all should be good.
@kellychoffman: Thanks for doing that. Of course.
@joen: Thanks Javier for finding the differences in all the new as well.
@javierarce: I think they’re harder to work with was figuring out what was going on. It’s terrible. The state of the Figma history system. So I think we will find these, this problem in the future again. Yeah. Fix it. Yeah.
@estelaris: Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you for taking care of that and thank you for bringing that up. Hello Paal and Boy. Okay. Any questions, anybody about the Figma? What happened? Nope. Okay, cool. Um, nope. Okay. Anybody else has anything to share today?
@javierarce: Okay, so I can say some non- amazing work.
@estelaris: Never say that it is always amazing work. Hold on. Let me see. I need to get security. Yeah. Yeah, it should be able to show.
@javierarce: Perfect. Okay. Uh, so I’m going to show you, um, uh,probably you remember that Shaun has been working on the inspector 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., he’s been offering some ideas, uh, on how, how, uh, how to improve that sidebar, uh, basically make it more compact and easier to read and reduce the chaos that sidebar has, uh, currently, um, and I’ve been helping him, uh, in a smaller, I mean, in different parts of that, of that project. Um, for instance, I started working on these, um, on the color UI. Uh, so all the interfaces that have to do with, uh, selecting a color, um, changing the backgrounds links, uh, etcetera.
Um, and this is the current interface. And as you can see is, um, uh, Now we see it’s a little bit chaotic and it is too much, too much interface, I think, right? Like if you see this, this, uh, section here, we have, uh, text color, background color, link color, it looks the same. Uh, there’s other things going on, like, you have this clear button, uh, that appears even though there’s nothing to clear, um. If you have, uh, like these are the theme colors and, uh, probably one of those are selected because the, I dunno, maybe the text is pink, but at the end of it, doesn’t tell you that it’s pink. So there’s a lot of things going on there.
Uh, and this is what happens when you select the color. You have like a indicator here, uh, that is, it doesn’t do anything, uh, trust, I know. Um, when you select the gradient, you have this, uh, different interface to sort the grain is, is there, like, it makes things, you know, like, uh, more complicated and taller.
And then if you click, um, have you the chance to color it, uh, you have this popover, uh, that definitely needs some tightening because it’s very simple. Uh, but as you can see, when you have a, another color, the preview item there tends to size this again, it’s not, it works. It works well, uh, but it’s too much interface and it will be repressed.
So, um, what I’ve been doing these days is, uh, trying to, uh, follow some of the, of the , uh, ideas Shaun established with respect of the sidebar, and try to apply that, to use those ideas. Yeah. try to see how they will work with, uh, with a color, uh, UI. So, um, the first thing that I I did was something that, uh, tenancy. Yes, it is like the order of the items is, it’s wrong right now it’s like we have the text background and the links, uh, and that makes sense, uh, backgrounds will be in the background, right. And the way you read this interface right now is, uh, background doesn’t have any color, it’s just transparent. Links have a green color applied, uh, and text has, uh, the blue color applied, but you can reset it because it’s not the full one, right? It is the one that comes with a theme. So this right away simplifies the interface. Um, and we are able also maintain the, this, this, um, this warning message that basically tells you that your, the color combination is not, uh, Is it, uh, is it, uh, I think may we will also improve this thing, like making, you know, like, uh, pointing to the user, which colors to, to be changed, like maybe with a dot or a warning message, something like that, uh, to be even more easy.
Um, if you click the color, uh, you will open this popover. And when I’m done here, this was basically a sabbatical as shown there. The main concept you have the color picker on top, like in the Figma sketch or other design, uh, applications. Um, and then you have, uh, this bottom part, you have a selector, uh, that it could be the custom color. And we also will offer the theme colors. So this will be a dropdown and you can change between those, uh, those sets of colors. So, and also you can save those colors for other use. Like if you are, uh, in, you’re looking at the custom colors, you will save your favorite colors and then is it, uh, In other parts of, of the, of your design.
Um, and it also plays a, uh, color picker here, uh, that probably is going to be useful, uh, to customize your items even more. Um,
uh, if you’re thinking the background, uh, then what I started doing was, uh, you know, adding a select, uh, you know, on top and, uh, Well, um, the idea for this, for, for the whole interface for the sidebar and for the popover is trying to make things, uh, very compact and easy to read. Uh, so instead of putting the label on top and then add the dropdown, I tried to combine those, uh, elements, uh, in just one line.
Uh, the problem is that maybe this interface is not very accessible because it’s relies too much, um, on the color of the solid element being blue. So I was thinking that maybe we will add, uh, I think here, uh, so now this looks like a dropdown and again, it’s this one, one line. So it’s very, uh, very small.
Um, but, uh, that, that is just a detail, uh, other interesting things that colors and gradients could be represented by circles. And then, images, we could use a rectangle, so it’s very easy to spot the image when adding another color. Right. Um, If you select, uh, the first time you select, uh, an image, or you just select the background and change, uh, to the, to the, uh, you, can you have this interface to drop a name it’s there and this probably not the right icon, but, uh, um, like with a color picker, we will have tools there.
So this will open the, the media library. Um, And of course you can drag and drop, uh, here, an image, and then you will get this, uh, different interface where you can change the focal point. Uh, I’m not sure if this design makes sense or not, but I’m trying to follow this idea of the padding and margin. Uh, Inputs, uh, but probably will.
We need to be, uh, he designed this, this particular thing, and then we have another dropdown here, uh, to select, uh, between different modes. Like you could have field fit, uh, or tile and something I did was, um, again with the same idea of making things. Uh, sorry. Comeback was, um, grandis took down. Why did you continue to display of the, of the image and then at the bottom you can select fixed, uh, instead of putting that, uh, UI, uh, in the previous, uh, in the, in the main pop-over.
So I think this, this could be like a secondary action. Isn’t it doesn’t need, we don’t need to show it all the time. But it’s there on the display areas. So I think it could work. I don’t know. Um, yeah, so, and then the gradient, uh, is of course, uh, some of them bigger, uh, there are more things going on and you need to adjust for stuff.
So I basically maintain the same interface that we have now with this. Um, this is glider, uh, I added this element, which allows users to remove the, the control point. Um, um, I dunno, maybe it’s too much, maybe it’s or maybe it’s very complicated to see. I’m not sure if this is the right, uh, design decision, but I think, uh, we will give you that, you know, uh, I need to physically remove the consequence.
On the control point. And then this is a bit more complicated because, uh, for variants, each color has a capacity and then the grading itself has an ability. So, um, this very easily gets a bit complicated by like we have the, the color here with an alpha and then the busty. So, uh, in order to simplify that, I thought we will have this Queanbeyan, uh, interface, uh, into steps.
Like by default, you get a degree. You can move the control points. This is works exactly as it was right now, you’d have deposited for the whole thing. Uh, and also we have, uh, custom grades, uh, so you can change them or say them very easily. And then if you click on one of those kinds of points, uh, Um, the continent side of that, uh, over, uh, slides, and then you have an interface to edit the color.
And so this simplified variously, the whole thing, uh, you can select the color, you can use your favorite colors or the theme colors right away, and you can also remove the color and it is a color picker. So it’s another distribution. Uh, I think it solves the problem of having too many things on one element and you can very easily with the first step you can control the whole variant.
And if you want it to refine it, you can go here. Um, and I think that it’s mostly everything. I think we’ll have to work on the gradient, but, uh, I’m pretty happy with, with, uh, with all real things. So. Yeah. That’s, that’s fine. I wanted to tell you
@estelaris: a lot of work and that is good. Yeah. That’s a lot of work, so I don’t know why you say it’s not great work and it is really a lot.
@javierarce: So yeah, many, many, many, many pieces. Yes. Yes.
@estelaris: There are a couple of comments here from Joel and Channing. So let’s see real quick. Uh, Joel plus one is on the warning message that it can be confusing sometimes right now I don’t. Um, yeah, I kind of saw it and I liked it. I liked the warning message, but, uh, but yeah, I did just kind of went like, wait, what, why are you showing up now? Right. Yeah.
@javierarce: And you have to read a lot in order to, to understand, like, it is not obvious.
@estelaris: That’s the one then, um, could clicking the drop area also open up the media library when you are choosing the background image?
@javierarce: Yeah. That’s a good idea. Yeah.
@estelaris: Right there open the library of images. Yeah.
@javierarce: And I think that that’s the actual behavior. So I think we can maintain that. I also try some ideas, put a link here and also a link to Openverse, maybe. I don’t know. Uh, but, um, yeah, definitely. That could be an improvement.
@estelaris: Ann is saying that she likes the differentiation of the rectangle for images. Then I’m just going to add to that when you have the gradients, you turn that color into a rectangle right there instead of a circle on the picker, on the color picker right there. Yeah. So if we are not, we’re using colors and we should use, if you are using colors for circles, for colors, that you should keep it the same.
And use rectangles for images, then, you know, just keep them the same.. Um, let’s see what else? Channing says I like how you mix the progressive disclosure idea with the pop-over idea for gradients. And I know you want to expand more on that. Channing?.
@critterverse: I’m not sure if that’s the proper name for it or not, but the idea of progressive disclosure, if I’m saying the right thing is the idea that you could kind of go deeper into these panels.
Right. And we’ve traditionally looked at that as being part of something that would happen in the sidebar itself. Um, you could continue to kind of go deeper and each time you would go deeper, the screen could potentially like shift to a new set of options. Um, but one thing we’ve been kind of weighing the pros and cons of is the idea of a pop-over that could, you know, be an alternative solution to that that’s potentially quicker.
Uh, potentially more accessible? I’m not sure, but it does seem like a nice option to keep exploring. And I really like how Javier started to mix those two. I think there’s probably more instances where you might need to mixed those, even, I mean, beyond color, it could be a pattern that we could replicate elsewhere.
@estelaris: And then Joen just gave you two links for some more relevant , that it’s relevant to this exploration that you’re doing. Um, so maybe you want to click on the chat and get those links for you for your reference Javier. Um, anybody else has any other comments for Javier? I see that we got a lot of good responses in here.
@javierarce: Yeah. Thank you very much.
@kellychoffman: What are you thinking about the custom section? Like those custom colors? How are you? So like the custom colors, how, how they show up? Like, are you,
@javierarce: so yeah, the, the idea is, uh, you will have this dropdown where you can, probably it’s the other way around actually theme colors will be sloppier, uh, by default because it won’t be, uh, you won’t have custom colors initially. Then, the idea is that when you save a color, uh, we could offer, uh, the name of the color is in a library. I’m not sure I’ve seen these things like, uh, you use Google for instance, there are, uh, They, they used to offer you the name of the color.
And I think there are libraries that offer you the equivalence. So we could use that to populate that input field or rename the color to your liking. So, uh, it’s a very simple thing. Um, I haven’t thought of much about this thing, but I think we will have something, something simpler. Um,
@estelaris: Anyone else?
Nope. Okay. Well, thank you, Javier. Thank you very much. Very good exploration. Well, I guess, um, anybody else has something else to show us today? We’re open. Hello Boy.. Thanks the floor. All yours. Um,
@ibdz: I have something like kind of, uh, some experiment. Um, okay. First, uh, I saw in the #coreCSS. And then I, I followed that they, they are working on the, the, um, color variable inside a WP admin. And then I, I think about the colors that are, that is the pilot for, for all the WordPress that is defined as a hex, hex code as this. And I don’t know where it’s from because, uh, what I can, I tend to follow is the solely, uh, the proposal from, from 2019, two years ago from dev.
And then I don’t know how to, how to, what isthe algorithm of the color palette. So I try to, to find out what is that. The methodology of this colors. And then, um, I, I think I can, I can define it, uh, from the colors to a studio that dev uh, and use it in 2019 and from maybe a sec, distant from @melchoyce, uh, maybe one or two years ago.
And yeah, I can try it. That is, uh, this is, uh, a colored thumb of the color. And then, um, my question is, uh, from one of the ticket, um, here is, uh, this, this color is still out in WordPress as blue. And do you think they really should define it in, uh, WordPress or not because now we use the blue fifty.
Yes. And yeah, but we definite it in our handbook as uh, another code, another color. And maybe in the future, we will share it into maybe putting in maybe more Y brand or more. Yeah. So just discuss about it.
@joen: Cool. By the way, I, I can respond if that’s okay. I haven’t heard or found any conversations about replacing the WordPress blue, but since you bring it up, I would personally love to see it happen. One of the challenges with the WordPress blue as you show it here is that it’s very muted and it has a greenish tint to it, which has this property that when you want to show white on top of it, it’s very hard to get contrast without losing vibrancy.
Whereas, if you pull it just a little bit towards the purple or ultra Marine spectrum, the contrast skyrockets, it’s something that’s easy to sort of play around with in the WCG color contrast checkers. It’s always fun to sort of see how the further away from the yellow green spectrum, you go towards the blue and purple contrast with white increases.
So I would love to see. Uh, a more vibrant color. So that’s just a, a hope that we could update that, but I haven’t heard anything, uh, regarding that quite yet. Cool work.
@ibdz: Um, yeah. And, uh, my second question about, about the colors is on now we have, uh, 12 colors for each palette. Um, do, do, do we think that, uh, we should limit it to maybe use a convention, like a Fiero, a hundred to 200, 300 instead of the 5, 10 20, but what do you think.
@joen: W we could talk about color so long, I’d always be happy to. And I always, I I’d be happy to talk in the channel as well. Cause, cause we could talk about this for days. And again, this is just a personal opinion. Um, I have only been cursorily following the course. The assessed discussions they’ve been going on for a while.
Now you mentioned 2019, some of these. Explorations. One of the things I love about a good color pallette is to reduce as much as possible to just a very few set of base colors. And then see how far you can go with those. And then when necessary expand there. There, there are various use cases for palettes.
And when you see a pallette like this, you, you sort of get the temptation to, to feel like it has to work in a harmonious spectrum. But then when you’re actually working on the software, you find the need for blue 50, 90% of the time and blue 80, maybe like. 1% of the time it’s so the, the actual use of the software, I find personally varies a great deal. So I’m always a fan of reduction from, from that angle. Makes sense.
@ibdz: And, um, I, my next step is to consolidate this pilot with the 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/ and the fear of death Gutenberg into just solely WordPress colors. Yeah, definitely. Cool. Yeah.
And now I’m working on, uh, the designfor, um, the translation day that will be launched next month. Yeah. So I tried to apply the, colors from that exploration and to, yeah. Okay. Thanks.
@critterverse: Did you make the Wapuu too? He’s so cute. And he matches your design very nicely.
@estelaris: Okay. Um, That’s good. Anybody else got any questions? Any other questions?
Nope.
Okay. Uh, we have less than less than, uh, we have seven minutes. So anything else that we want to talk about?
No questions, nothing.
@ibdz: Um, about the library, the Figma component library?
@estelaris: Oh, we already, we already talked about that. You were late. You were late Boy. Um, You want to go again Joel and explain it to him, quick?
I can give a quick update on what happened. What happened, I think was a mistake, a human error that caused more than 300 components to have some change, not sure what change it was and that felt wrong. So it took a backup of the file. And at that point in time, and then restored to a version of the Figma file that did not have those 300 plus changes. So the Figma file is good again, but if you’re, if you made some icon or something after. July 27th.
Um, please copy it from the backup file into the, into the new one and then publish again. Okay.
@estelaris: All right. Anybody else?
No. Okay. Well then I guess I’m just going to give you all back your five minutes. Um, thank you very much for joining and, uh, and we’ll be back on Tuesday. Uh we’re we’re started reviewing, uh, tickets. Um, Paal was on triage this week on Tuesday and we’re getting people back. So we’re going to start, we’re going to continue now, and we’re going to get me back, get off that summer break and get on a regular schedule from now on. Okay. So we’ll be back on triage on Tuesday and in the same meetings on Wednesdays. So [00:32:00] hope to see you guys and thank you very much. Good day. Good night. We’ll see you.
@ibdz: Bye.
