Title: Hallway Hangout: Let’s chat about using Replay.io in the FSE Outreach Program
Author: annezazu
Published: February 21, 2023
Last modified: December 19, 2023

---

 [  ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/annezazu/) [annezazu](https://profiles.wordpress.org/annezazu/)
8:00 pm _on_ February 21, 2023     
Tags: [fse-hallway-hangout ( 31 )](https://make.wordpress.org/test/tag/fse-hallway-hangout/),
[fse-outreach-program ( 111 )](https://make.wordpress.org/test/tag/fse-outreach-program/)

# Hallway Hangout: Let’s chat about using Replay.io in the FSE Outreach Program

This is a summary of a Hallway Hangout that was wrangled in the [#fse-outreach-experiment](https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C015GUFFC00)
channel as part of the [FSE Outreach Program](https://make.wordpress.org/test/handbook/full-site-editing-outreach-experiment/).
Thank you to everyone who joined in!

**Attendance:**

[@annezazu](https://profiles.wordpress.org/annezazu/) [@paaljoachim](https://profiles.wordpress.org/paaljoachim/)
[@bassgang](https://profiles.wordpress.org/bassgang/) [@dealbuquerque](https://profiles.wordpress.org/dealbuquerque/)
Jason from Replay.io and Dig (no further info).

**Video Recording:**

**Notes**:

For broader context, this is a hallway hangout building off of the initial effort
to [gather volunteers to help test Replay.io in the FSE Outreach Program](https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/12/07/fse-program-seeking-volunteers-to-use-replay-io-for-capturing-bugs/)
as a way to consider possible ways of including the tool more broadly in the project.
[Replay has a big OSS commitment](https://docs.replay.io/workflows/oss-projects),
including free support, which allows the FSE Outreach Program to explore using it
ahead of potential broader use.

**Quick introductions**

We started with some quick introductions to get a sense of who was on the call, 
how we’re connected to the WordPress project, and what drew folks to help with testing
replay.io:

 * Oliver: Sponsored by replay, been in WordPress community since 2017, used to 
   work for Google where he worked on their first 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/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/)
   or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. ([site kit](https://sitekit.withgoogle.com/)).
 * Paul: from Germany, self employed web developer, passion for automation and previously
   led a QA team.
 * Jason: used to be the tech lead for firefox devtools, worked on etsy with a big
   focus on their PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor)
   is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially
   suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. [https://www.php.net/manual/en/index.php](https://www.php.net/manual/en/index.php)
   work, big fan of WordPress and PHP. 
 * Paal: from Norway, helps a ton with testing and design, used to be a teacher 
   and enjoys being a regular user, looking for sponsorship.
 * Anne: sponsored by Automattic for CoreCore Core is the set of software required
   to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. & Test teams, runs
   the FSE Outreach Program.

**What is **[**replay.io**](http://replay.io/)**?**

Replay,io is a “time travel debugger”. It’s just like a video where you can pause,
fast forward, rewind but the entire browser session is recorded. Replay is free 
for open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source
code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source**
must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. communities so we’re trying 
to see if it’ll make a difference in how the community reports bugs and maintainers
solve them. Oliver and Jason [shared some additional details](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Or6786yyvpyacyZPKfVbPfAF58wJuvZ8xdMkIlcAW0o/edit#slide=id.g17012322a3e_0_11)
including [a case study from Pantheon](https://blog.replay.io/pantheon-solves-performance-bottlenecks-improving-load-time-by-5x).

**Examples **

We briefly went through some examples with TechCrunch as an initial overview followed
by an example from [@paaljoachim](https://profiles.wordpress.org/paaljoachim/).

**Feedback on Replay.io**

At a high level, there have been various notes around the Site Editor loading slowly
in the Replay browser from folks using the tool. Since the Replay browser isn’t 
something to aim to get widespread compatibility with, the Replay team is going 
to dig in to see what might be causing the problem and how we can resolve that in
order for a better experience in testing. This will be a huge help since the Site
Editor is an obvious thing we want to be testing regularly. [@franz00](https://profiles.wordpress.org/franz00/)
kindly provided some examples of this ([replay recording 1](https://app.replay.io/recording/recreation-1-of-issue-48059-add-link--ffc2811f-b013-444f-ab8a-8e0174eba335),
[replay recording 2](https://app.replay.io/recording/recreation-2-of-issue-48059-social-icon--e9dbc711-534d-4d03-b6d3-f3d9b3a58ced))
while trying to [replicate a current issue](https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/48059).

From there, [@paaljoachim](https://profiles.wordpress.org/paaljoachim/) gave some
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. feedback
around using replay and setting up bookmarks. After the call, he recorded the following
video and passed along the following notes:

 * Adding a preview button/icon. To view the video before deciding to save or discard.
 * Adding all the icons for Viewer and DevTools at the same time in the left 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.. Using a separator
   between these. Reasoning is that the left sidebar icons are easier to notice 
   compared to clicking the Viewer and DevTools buttons top right.
 * Editing/cutting in the video timeline. 

Oliver and Jason shared a link to [Replay’s discord](http://replay.io/discord) and
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 by the repository owner. [https://github.com/](https://github.com/)
repo for folks to [continue to share feedback](https://github.com/replayio).

**Test automation**

We briefly covered test automation where you can write your playwright tests and
debug with Replay. There’s an effort in the WordPress project to [switch to Playwright](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/23/migrating-wordpress-e2e-tests-to-playwright/)
so it would be neat to explore more once the Replay Playwright integration is in
a better spot.

**Next steps**

 * Replay to look into slow performing replays.
 * Replay to reproduce the[ GitHub issue](https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/48059)
   we discussed on the call.

[#fse-hallway-hangout](https://make.wordpress.org/test/tag/fse-hallway-hangout/),
[#fse-outreach-program](https://make.wordpress.org/test/tag/fse-outreach-program/)

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