Admin Help: 11 November, 2013

Development has for realsies started on the new admin help feature pluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins..

(hurrah!)

It resides here, if you haven’t been paying attention to these updates: https://github.com/jazzsequence/WordPress-Admin-Help

Currently we’ve got 2 settings that appear in the user profile page to enable/disable tooltips and/or the help overview but neither of those have been implemented yet (though the settings do, in fact, save).

What we have to work with

@ninnypants and @trishasalas both looked at coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and currently core puts help in the headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. for the page you’re on, which is highly inefficient. What this means is that we’ll be doing a lot of forging our own paths with our 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.

The Plan

So, what we’ll need to do is develop a system that can be easily extended by other plugin and theme developers to allow them to add their own help to their theme/plugin.

Documentation will ideally live in separate files for each page. There will be a function (or series of functions) to pull in the relevant documentation for the current page. We’re going to do as much as we can to include existing help documentation into this, but we’re going a completely different route in terms of handling and presenting it than WordPress core.

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. will be created that developers can hook into so they can add their own documentation for their stuff.

What’s next?

@ninnypants is going to work on building out the architecture/framework for the plugin and use grunt to try to pull in existing help content.

@trishasalas is going to work on pulling the help content into the places it needs to go

@trishasalas and @ubernaut will work on ui stuff once the content is pulled in

Concerns

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)

@trishasalas is going to try to follow up with the 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) team and figure out what things we need to be thinking about in terms of accessibility (tests, what works, what doesn’t, resources, etc)

Internationalization

We, of course, need to make sure that all the strings we’re pulling in are properly i18nized. @jazzs3quence will be keeping an eye on that.

javascriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/. disabled/back-compatibility

We need to look into what WordPress core does in js-disabled/non-js browser environments, how they handle it, and what we should do in those cases based on what core’s doing. Our approach is pretty js-centric and would be pretty useless if js was disabled and we didn’t have a fallback (but then, maybe core is the same…).

Pull requests, tickets, comments, etc. are welcome on the GithubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ repo above. I’m usually on IRC though I may not always be at my computer. If I am, I will respond to pings (just say my nick in IRC and I’ll see it). The next meeting will be next monday 10:30 MST

#admin-help