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Chris Reynolds 8:47 pm on March 3, 2014
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AH-O₂ Update — 3 March, 2014

Help Overview refactoring
@brainfork has been ill and was unable to work on this this week. @jazzs3quence created tickets for some of the issues that were reported in https://github.com/jazzsequence/WordPress-Admin-Help/issues/50 many of which were things that @brainfork was planning to work on. See:
https://github.com/jazzsequence/WordPress-Admin-Help/issues/55
https://github.com/jazzsequence/WordPress-Admin-Help/issues/57
https://github.com/jazzsequence/WordPress-Admin-Help/issues/47
https://github.com/jazzsequence/WordPress-Admin-Help/issues/46

Tooltips
@clorith is going to work on refactoring the tooltip structure a bit to make it more flexible for devs and give us more options for tooltip styles.
@trishasalas will be working on some new styles for the tooltips
Between the two of them, we’re hoping to nail:
https://github.com/jazzsequence/WordPress-Admin-Help/issues/58
https://github.com/jazzsequence/WordPress-Admin-Help/issues/56
https://github.com/jazzsequence/WordPress-Admin-Help/issues/45

Admin Help Inventory spreadsheet
@ubernaut has added tooltip locations to the Pages admin pages in the spreadsheet we’re using to keep track of such things. He will work on adding the actual TinyMCE formatting buttons this week.

Target Date
We’ve set a tentative target date for April 1. This will give us time to test the 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 and fix any issues before the discussion begins about WordPress 4.0 feature plugins.

Help wanted!
To meet this target, we need help:

  • adding tooltips — though this process may be changing, the changes should make things easier and we can help with the transition — mostly we need new tooltips to be added (or at least written) for all the elements (that have not been added already) in the spreadsheet (or for anything else that’s missing that isn’t included)
  • testers — we’d love to have more testers look at this and let us know if/when they find any issues

If either of these things sound like ways in which you could contribute, you can let us know in the Google Group, in the comments of this post, or in our Monday meeting.

Our next meeting is next Monday 18:30UTC.

#admin-help, #ah-o2

Chris Reynolds 6:29 pm on February 25, 2014
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AH-O₂ Update — 24 February, 2014

Help Overview refactoring
@brainfork was going to work on this but didn’t have the time. He was able to review the code though, but no progress has been made. @trishasalas has stepped up to help out with this. They will be taking a look at the issues reported in this ticket (moving help footer over) as well as this ticket (text next to dashicons are not aligned vertically) and creating new tickets for any other issues that come up.

Tooltip hover delay
@clorith reported that the tooltips were sometimes taking the focus away from the actual item. he then submitted a pull request which has been merged that increases the hover delay. This will be included in the next version 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/ repository.

Tooltip arrow positioning
…is still an issue for some tooltips which is mostly to do with not having good selectors to work with (not everything in the WordPress admin has IDs or classes associated with them). @trishasalas is going to look at this, but since this could be done completely differently in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. by just adding more specific ids to the things that need tooltips, I’ve given it a lower priority. @trishasalas may try to do at least one admin page, though, as a proof-of-concept.

Versioning
Because I can’t consider this 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 “done” (and therefore 1.0) until tooltips are on every page, and because we’re going to run out of digits if we keep going at the 0.x rate for every weekly update, and because looking at a plugin in the repo that has a 0.x version looks less like a completed entity than a 1.x release, we’ve agreed to tweak how the versioning is handled a bit to make better use of minor point releaseMinor 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. versions. Updates with minor fixes or new tooltips will be considered a 0.0.x release, more significant changes will be a 0.x release. There was some discussion about this that can be read in the logs, but the main reasoning is that it seems misleading to call something a 1.0 if it’s still incomplete (in this case, missing tooltips) and we’d be at a 1.0 in 4 weeks at our current rate.

Admin Help Inventory spreadsheet
@ubernaut will work on tackling the Pages…pages next in the spreadsheet having just finished filling out the Network Admin screens.

@nikv has started work on adding tooltips to the comments page but that has not been merged into the plugin yet.

Tooltips on Mobile
We’ve decided to go with the tap-and-hold interaction for tooltips on mobile devices. This takes a lower priority to getting the tooltips in and no work has been done on it yet, but if someone would like to tackle it, let us know by commenting in the open ticket here: https://github.com/jazzsequence/WordPress-Admin-Help/issues/32

The logging bot was having a fit, so here’s my copy of the logs from the meeting (the first 15 minutes are cut off, unfortunately): http://s3q.us/log/ah-o2-log-2014-02-24.html

#admin-help, #ah-o2

Chris Reynolds 10:53 pm on January 27, 2014
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AH-O₂ Update — 27 January, 2014

The new time threw me and I ended up starting the meeting a half hour early. Apologies to anyone who may have arrived *on time* who ended up missing the first half hour of the meeting.

This week there were some significant contributions from @mdbitz for the help overviews, @trishasalas for the tooltip styling and @brainfork and @mdbitz for new tooltips. We also have some documentation now for adding new tooltips. Most things are now functionally in place and we’re just trying to fill in the gaps.

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 contributors

I didn’t realize this was possible until @trishasalas pointed it out, but I added some folks on as contributors to the project repo on GitHub. This essentially gives them commit/merge access but it also means I can assign tickets directly to specific people/contributors. If you are interested in jumping in and would like to be added as a contributor, let me know, but I think I got everyone who’s been submitting pull requests thus far. (Pull request can still be submitted normally, the only real difference is I’m not the only one able to merge them in and/or able to push commits to the repo.)

Tooltips on mobile?

I’ve opened a ticket to discuss how to (and whether we should) handle tooltips on mobile devices. My feeling is that the value of the tooltips is discovering them accidentally when you are trying to do something and mousing around the screen. User interaction on touch devices doesn’t work the same, and any kind of interaction that would generate a tooltip that I can think of would involve more intentional interaction with the interface, which defeats the purpose to me. I’m open to other ideas, though, if anyone has them. https://github.com/jazzsequence/WordPress-Admin-Help/issues/32

New tooltips

The plugins pages should have tooltips on them now (including the subpages), so we’re going to start working through the list of admin pages to add tooltips to. Now that we have documentation on how to add them, I would like everybody on the team (and anyone else interested) to try taking an admin page and start adding tooltips. We’ll use the spreadsheet to mark what’s been done and what needs to be done as well as allow people to claim pages so we aren’t stepping on each others’ toes. This will also draw more attention to the documentation we have, and whether it needs to be updated (and to what extent it should be updated). The more people we have working on these, the faster we’ll be done, and this is the biggest chunk of work in front of us right now.

On that note, we’re going to be looking into adding tooltips to the admin 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.. One thing I was thinking about from testing was how a lot of people would move their mouse around the screen looking for things to pop out at them to guide them to their task. A tooltip that appeared over “Appearance”, for example, could explain that that’s where you go to change the look and feel of your site which might otherwise be (and was) ambiguous to some users.

Known Issues

There are a number of issues we’re currently working on fixes for, but there’s probably a lot more we aren’t aware of. If you are testing the 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 and are having some issue that hasn’t been reported already, please create a ticket for us on Github so we can look at it. Make sure you check the closed tickets as well as there may be some tickets that got closed for one reason or another.

I’ve created a number of tags to filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. different types of tickets. This list is growing, but hopefully can give a casual observer a frame of reference in terms of what we might need help on and in what context:

needs testing means we need another pair of eyes on it to confirm that it is a) is happening for more than just the person reporting the issue and b) under what circumstances the issue can be reproduced. This status may also be used later for issues that have been fixed but need confirmation that the fix is working. These tickets are things where anyone is welcome to jump in and try to reproduce the issue and report back with their experience. The more information we have on these, the better.

question means the issue is open to the floor for feedback regarding how something can/should be handled. these may or may not be technical. anyone is welcome to put in their 2 cents.

priority-* refers to the priority of the ticket

wontfix means that, for whatever reason, this isn’t something that can be fixed. One example of a wontfix ticket is the $WP_Screen errors that appear with WP_DEBUG turned on. This was the only way we could pull in the existing help content without hacking coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. (and therefore is a non-issue if/when this gets merged into core). (If anyone has a better way to handle this, feel free to let us know.)

enhancements are tickets that will add some new functionality. unless assigned to someone, these are open to anyone who wants to jump in and comment or take ownership of that particular proposed functionality.

One issue that seems to resurfaced is that the add new tooltip on the plugins page is empty. I saw this early on but it seemed to fix itself and other people weren’t been able to reproduce it. It’s come back again for another tester, so we really need more testers to confirm to help us isolate this and try to figure out what’s up. Any assistance peeps can give is greatly appreciated.

How to contribute

The biggest things we’re looking for at this point in terms of contributing (if you aren’t comfortable working on adding in new tooltips) is testers trying to break stuff and people writing documentation. If you’d like to add documentation but not add in the tooltip or overview itself, you can create a ticket, paste your documentation in, and we can assign it to someone to add it to the plugin.

#admin-help, #ah-o2

Chris Reynolds 8:31 pm on January 13, 2014
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AH-O₂ Update — 13 January 2014

Tooltips

  • New tooltips to the 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 stalled primarily because not everyone was familiar with the grunt workflow. Since this adds an additional learning curve just to get started with the project, we’re dropping grunt for now so the js files (and anything else) can be edited directly which should hopefully increase the speed at which we’re able to do stuff. Grunt may be added back in later to do final tasks (like minification) or if everyone ultimately gets up to speed on grunt and decides, collectively, to start using it again. @ninnypants is going to work on pulling out the grunt dependencies (which is mostly in which js files are being called) and will also work on writing a how to tutorial for people to get started wtih grunt.
  • @trishasalas wasn’t able to work on tooltip styling this week. @ubernaut is going to pick up working on applying some basic styles to the tooltips this week.
  • we’re going to try to add an AH-O2-specific css class to the .ui-tooltip element we’re creating. For now, though, we’re just going to use .ui-tooltip. Ultimately, if the jquery-ui style guide project that @helen started working on picks up some momentum and produces canonical css rules for jquery-ui components, we’ll just use that, but for now we’ll try to use something like .ui-tooltip.ah-o2 to make sure we aren’t clashing against anyone else’s .ui-tooltip styles. @ninnypants is going to work on adding in an AH-O2 class to our tooltips.

Help Overview

  • @mdbitz wasn’t in attendance today but did submit a pull request earlier in the week for his work on the help overviews. It was a branch off an older version of the source, but I was able to get it merged today and it will be included in the next update on 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/.
  • the overviews are really rough in terms of styling, and I found some issues in how the screen options component was working (or not)
  • currently the overviews display existing help tab content. this is where we need help — writing new content to fill these containers. also:
  • Do we keep the tabs or turn those into tooltips or page-specific overviews? I’d like some feedback from folks who have worked on the current help system to help guide how we handle these moving forward. For now, I advised the team to add the tabs and we can always pull them out later.

Other stuff

  • I’ve started creating tickets in the GitHub repo for things that need to get done. Feel free to report any issues you find there: https://github.com/jazzsequence/WordPress-Admin-Help/issues
  • I also added some new tags to said tickets for priority to try to direct which issues are most important
  • We have a new banner for the WordPress.org repo thanks to @ubernaut. This will be added in the next update, also:

Ah02 2x

  • I should be able to get version 0.2 up tonight — I don’t think there’s anything else that I was waiting on that’s likely to be added before the next commit.
  • @ninnypants indicated that we should add define( 'SCRIPT_DEBUG', true ) to our wp-config.php files for adding new tooltips.

Next meeting will be next Monday 17:30UTC

#admin-help, #ah-o2

Chris Reynolds 7:14 pm on January 6, 2014
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AH-O₂ Update — 6 January, 2013

Help Overview Update

  • @mdbitz shared some screenshots of what he’s working on earlier in the week. These screenshots are available in the Google Group. The code isn’t quite ready to be merged yet, so the initial release on 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/ will just be with the tooltips.
  • The current solution involves hacking coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. — @mdbitz is trying to get it so we can pull existing help tab content from WP_Screen into the new help overview containers in the 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 plugin will display the current help content (if it exists) for the current page, but can be overridden and new content added by the plugin
  • @mdbitz is also working on getting the overviews to work responsively. @trishasalas and @ubernaut both said they’d be willing to help with this, if needed.
  • @jazzs3quence will hide the profile option for the help overviews temporarily for the initial release

Docs input

We (still) need input from docs folks if things are going to be changed in terms of how the content is presented vs. what was proposed in the original mockups. For reference, the main points that have been discussed are here and here.

  • @nlarnold1 will attend the thursday meeting and talk to the docs team to start the discussion
  • @jazzs3quence will try to be there as well.

Tooltips

  • @ubernaut brought up the issue that tooltips may not be usable on touch devices. Is there a solution/workaround? How are other people/projects handling this?
  • keyboard shortcuts for 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) wouldn’t work, either, on touch devices
  • No new tooltip hotspots (for lack of a better word) have been added. The plugins pages do not have anything filled in in the spreadsheet
  • @ubernaut will work on filling out those areas first and pinging the Google Group
  • once that’s done, @brainfork can work on adding in those tooltip areas
  • @jazzs3quence can also help fill in the gaps in the spreadsheet so it’s not bottlenecking development

Updating and testing the plugin

  • @jazzs3quence suggested adding support for the Github Updater plugin for access to bleeding edge updates. This was ultimately overruled — not really necessary if the maximum amount of lag between .org updates is one week and if ppl want the latest latest version, they can get it from 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.
  • .org plugin will be updated after the meeting, once a week
  • the first version of the plugin will be uploaded to WordPress.org today sometime

(Revised) Development Timeline

  • January 6 — AH-O2 to be added to wordpress.org/plugins
  • January 6 January 13 — initial help overview integration
  • January 13 — initial tooltips to be added for plugins pages
  • January 13 January 20 — initial tooltips to be added for all admin pages
  • January 20 — list of wants/needs from docs sub-team (this is on the outside, ideally we need this as soon as possible)
  • February 3 — first AH-O2 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. release
  • April 15 — tentative release date for WordPress 3.9, AH-O2 is fully tested and ready for inclusion in core.

Full IRC log

#admin-help, #ah-o2

Chris Reynolds 11:18 pm on December 30, 2013
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AH-O₂ Update – Last meeting of 2013

We had a good AH-O2 meeting this morning. Thanks to everyone who was able to make it. If you weren’t able to make it but want to get involved in any of the areas discussed in this post, head over to the Google Group to get involved in the discussion.

Docs tasks

Based on the various topics brought up last week, I would like for a team of docs contributors and interested parties in the AH-O2 team to brainstorm how you want to go about handling the help documentation that can be presented to the rest of the team so the dev team knows what we need to build. @siobhan @drewapicture @kpdesign – if any of you would be willing to lead the charge on this or suggest someone else who could lead a sub-team for discussing this, that would be awesome. A number of AH-O2 team members have expressed an interest in getting involved in this side of things, as well.

Progress updates

  • @mdbitz is working on the help overviews. Because of the holidays, last week was somewhat of a bust but will have something to show on Thursday.
  • @ninnypants & @brainfork are working on the tooltips. Currently their tasks are modifying the api as it exists now to hook the tooltips to labels/titles rather than an icon and adding more tooltips to hook content to. The current plan is to pick a page, and start adding tooltips to it (with filler text at least) and then move onto the next page. Since plugins.php has already gotten the initial treatment, we’re starting there. Much of the initial placement of the tooltips will be based on the spreadsheet that @zoerooney and @ubernaut are working on.
  • @trishasalas is going to work on styling the tooltips so they look nicer.
  • @trishasalas is going to be acting as a liaison 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 to make sure we’re on track there. Right now, since there’s not a lot of code laid down yet, there isn’t much we can do, but there are a few things we need to be thinking about.
  • The big thing that was discussed was keyboard navigation, a scope of which can be found here: http://www.w3.org/TR/2013/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20130905/G90 This was brought up in the discussion of the tooltips since tooltips are triggered by hover actions.
  • @ninnypants talked about how the tooltip api works which is a good read if anyone is looking to jump into the js side of this plugin and needs a head start or just as a refresher of how things are working. Discussion starts around here: https://irclogs.wordpress.org/chanlog.php?channel=wordpress-sfd&day=2013-12-30&sort=asc#m73182
  • @ubernaut and @zoeyrooney will continue to work on filling in the blanks in the spreadsheet to identify what help exists and what things we need and what may need to be reworded. Right now the focus is on identifying places for tooltips for @brainfork & @ninnypants to work on adding in, especially since the overview content is largely up in the air and depends on what the Docs team works out. (@ubernaut and @zoerooney should be involved in that discussion/those discussions as well.)

Development Timeline

A few dates were tossed around for possible 3.9/4.0 release. We’ll want to try to align our schedule to the 3.9 release so we’re ready when it’s time to merge the feature plugins into /trunk for 4.0 (which will happen after 3.9 is released). The two tentative dates for 3.9 are April 15/28 with tentative dates for 4.0 being August 12/19. A lead hasn’t been selected for 3.9/4.0 and ultimately the release schedule will be determined by the lead(s), but, for our part, we should anticipate being ready to deployDeploy Launching code from a local development environment to the production web server, so that it's available to visitors. by the middle of April with as many major issues ironed out as possible. Here’s a modified (and tentative) development timeline — much of this will depend on what the Docs sub-team comes back with and how much will need to be changed to accommodate their suggestions.

  • January 6 — initial help overview integration & AH-O2 to be added to 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//plugins
  • January 13 — initial tooltips to be added for all admin pages
  • January 20 — list of wants/needs from docs sub-team (this is on the outside, ideally we need this as soon as possible)
  • February 3 — first AH-O2 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. release
  • April 15 — tentative release date for WordPress 3.9, AH-O2 is fully tested and ready for inclusion in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress..

#4-0, #admin-help, #ah-o2

Chris Reynolds 10:00 pm on December 16, 2013
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AH-O₂ Update 16 Dec, 2013

We had a great meeting today! Shout outs to our newbies @zoerooney, @brainfork and @mdbitz for showing up and volunteering to take some of the load.

doc-bot apparently had a heart attack during our meeting and unfortunately could not attend (which isn’t so great for the having a record of stuff).1

Stuff we’re working on this week

  • @zoerooney and @ubernaut are inventorying existing help contents, identifying what we can use and where

At this time, the plan is to use the existing help content as much as possible, but there may be more appropriate ways to adapt the content to what we’re doing. For example, the edit-comments.php help has a tab for moderating comments, which really just breaks down what each column is for — those could be instead turned into tooltips. There may be other places that are lacking help entirely. We need to identify where the holes are and track what we already have.

@zoerooney and @ubernaut are working on a spreadsheet with all the existing admin pages to start documenting where each one is at: https://docs.google.com/a/jazzsequence.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0ArMlUQ8mfETvdFFsb3lUWFN6T1UwSi05djN6a3JleGc&single=true&gid=1&output=html

If you want edit access to the spreadsheet to help contribute, let Zoe or I know.

  • @brainfork is looking into the tooltips and adding them back in. will coordinate with @ninnypants

The tooltips were (temporarily) removed from the codebase because they weren’t checking for the user metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. (at least that’s what I understood). We will be looking at re-adding these back in as well as starting to add them to some new places in the admin.

  • @mdbitz is working on the admin help overviews

Help overviews will appear at the top of each page when the setting is active in the profile settings.

We are happy to have more volunteers — if you are interested in helping in any of the above areas, please get in touch with those involved (or me, if you don’t know how) to coordinate your efforts.

w00t. you guys rock!

Other things that were discussed

Do we want to eliminate an icon to hover over for tooltips altogether? Hover over the element instead?

This would drastically reduce clutter. If users discovered that there were tooltips (e.g. with a short hover delay), they would quickly learn to start hovering over everything if they had questions about a particular setting or element. In this case, we may want to (visually) communicate that tooltips are active and allow people to disable them. Toggle where the current help tab is now?

@melchoyce, in the various things she does, made a number of mockups (that were used for MP6 and CEUX) which replaced the screen options and help tabs with something else. Here are a few examples:

http://melchoyce.com/wpadmin-ui/content-editing.html
http://melchoyce.com/wpadmin-ui/img/dash-screenoptions.png

None of these are currently part of any particular project at the moment. Since I had seen them in CEUX I thought maybe that was where it would go, but I caught Mel on IRC and she said it wasn’t. (Which is actually a good thing, since CEUX is on hiatus.) At some point, it may become a (peripheral) part of AH-O2 to deal with the screen options tab since the two will need to be designed together and implemented at the same time. I would like to use Mel’s mockups as a guide for how we handle our Help tab replacement.

I have code from an earlier admin help experiment that hides the help tab that can be used for both help and screen options when we need them.

My 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 has the code that @ninnypants added but tooltips have been (temporarily) removed.
https://github.com/jazzsequence/WordPress-Admin-Help

We will be having a meeting on Monday Dec 23 17:30 UTC for whoever’s around to meet. After the holidays we can see where we’re at and take another look at the schedule and deadlines.

1 @mdbitz was able to provide a transcript of the meeting for anyone who missed it:

#admin-help, #ah-o2

Chris Reynolds 7:05 pm on December 9, 2013
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AH-O₂ Update (the project formerly known as Admin Help) — 9 December, 2013

The Plan

  • We’re going to shoot for WordPress 4.0.
  • I am going to implement a release schedule and base our schedule on 3.9, however, we’re going to shoot for a 6 week cycle (ideally leaving time for testing). I’ll post the schedule but it will be subject to change.
  • I am going to make an announcement/call for devs post on make/coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.

Stuff that needs to be done

This is the more immediate stuff that we need to take care of:

  • @ninnypants’ tooltips and other js stuff needs to be finalized, tested, merged into the main github repo
  • admin help overview needs to be implemented. this uses the usermeta setting to determine whether to display the help overview and js from @ninnypants’ repo to feed the content into the spaces. but the spaces need to be there for the content. @trishasalas and @nlarnold1 and @jazzs3quence would like to start looking at this
  • once the overview container is created and works, we will need content to feed into it
  • likewise with the tooltips, once the js is done, we will need content to send to those to make sure they work
  • once these things are in some kind of working order, I will upload the 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 to 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/

@ninnypants’ repo is here https://github.com/ninnypants/WordPress-Admin-Help/tree/core_js main repo is https://github.com/jazzsequence/WordPress-Admin-Help

After we push the plugin to wp.org, the plan is to do weekly updates to the plugin from 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(s) after the meeting (assuming things have been done to the codebase).

Admin Help is now AH-O2

“Breathing new life into admin help!”

…so yeah, we have a codename.

(Tentative) Schedule

  • December 12 — target release date for 3.8
  • January 6 — target date for tasks above to be completed, and AH-O2 to be added to WordPress.org/plugins
  • February 3 — (tentative) target date for first AH-O2 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.
  • Sometime in the future — WordPress 3.9 is released
  • Sometime after that — WordPress 4.0 is released (hopefully with AH-O2)

(this schedule will be updated/changed as we know more about the release schedule for 3.9 in advance of 4.0)

Props to @nlarnold1 for joining us today and being willing to dive in.

#admin-help, #ah-o2

Chris Reynolds 6:04 pm on December 2, 2013
Tags:   

Admin Help Update

I was there in #wordpress-sfd this morning, but no one else was. Last week I was unable to make the meeting but @trishasalas was able to step in in my stead to keep the band playing. There were a few things I wanted to talk about this week, so I’ll post them for discussion here. I should be at or around my desk for most of the day and/or week, so feel free to hit me on IRC or you can email or GTalk me at chris at jazzsequence dot com.

WordPress 3.8 is closer than you think

I’ve been monitoring the #wordpress-dev chatter and 3.8 is only a couple weeks away. Barring any horrible blockers, it will drop on the 18th 12th meaning that 3.9 feature plugins need to be presentable immediately following the 3.8 release because they will start to be integrated into coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. at that point.

**If we want this to be included in WordPress 3.9, we need to have something to present.**

Not only presentable, it needs to be tested. There are some things — like 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) or internationalization or backwards-compatibility concerns that wouldn’t necessarily be blockers for integrating into core, but we need to have our stuff together. Which means, if the 18th 12th is when 3.8 drops, that should be our deadline for having the 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 done, ready to go and be tested by actual humans. If we can’t make that deadline this time around, we can continue to work on this for 4.0 (or whatever the release following 3.9 will be), but since developer resources have been our main weak point up to now, we’re going to need to do some serious recruiting.

So where are we?

I would like to start merging the stuff that @ninnypants has been working on into my repo so there’s a single repository that we’re using and go from there. Since I haven’t looked at his changes, or tested any of that stuff, I’d like for someone to let me know what the latest is on that front and whether we can start building on that. Also, I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to spare on that this week, so anyone’s help in this process and/or pull requests would be greatly appreciated.

Code name

Having a code name is something that was proposed over here that we haven’t ever had and thus far the meetings and p2 posts have been tagged with “admin help”. This is somewhat boring. @ubermaut suggested Lifebuoy. Help2 is another idea I just came up with (see, it’s squared — because some of our ideas came from how Squarespace handles help/documentation — and it can also be read as Help 2 — as in the second version of help…). Any other ideas are welcome. It seems a little late to be figuring this out now, but then, if we’re gearing for a 4.0 release, maybe having a code name will make us more distinctive and noticeable.

Last call for 3.9

If this week goes by with no real progress on the plugin, we should again expect this to be punted and focus on getting something ready for the next release of WordPress. It can be done if we are all able to make sprint to get it to happen, but if feature plugins are being merged into core as soon as 3.8 hits the virtual shelves, we’ll already have missed the boat.

If there are any other folks out there interested in helping make this feature a part of core, meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. organizers, folks who just want to start contributing to WordPress core, please hit me up and let me know in what way(s) you are able to help & I can get you up to speed. This could be done in a matter of hours at a hack day or some such thing if someone was inclined to start one up.

Thanks to everyone who has helped to get us this far. We’ll get there.

#admin-help

Chris Reynolds 6:32 pm on November 11, 2013
Tags:   

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