Block-based Meeting Notes — May 19, 2021

You can find the full meeting transcript on Slack (login required)

Meeting coordinator: @jffng
Notes kept by @ashiquzzaman
Time: Wednesday, 19 May 2021, 21:00 GMT+6
Channel: #themereview

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/ + Themes Updates:

The feature freeze for Gutenberg 10.7 is today

• You can now remove the experimental prefix from your theme.jsonJSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. files: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/29981

A fallback was added so it’s not going to break if you still have the experimental-theme.json file name.

• There is on-going discussion and work about how the theme color palette and coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. color palette interact and are surfaced to users. Very interesting reading and progress: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/31669

In the Full Site Editing project, the template resolution logic was simplified for its inclusion in core: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/31604

• The first iteration of a responsive mobile option to the nav 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. was merged: – https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/30047
• There’s an issue here to discuss feedback to block theme developer docs: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/31999
• And the create block theme tutorial was given a fresh update: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/31269

TT1 Block Updates

@poena highlighted that the theme needs to be tested and packaged for release to .org . It becomes more difficult to do the call for testing in the FSEFSE Short for Full Site Editing, a project for the Gutenberg plugin and the editor where a full page layout is created using only blocks. outreach program without the updated theme on .org. She is also working on removing the theme blocker. All the TT1 reupload to the theme directory can be tracked here – https://github.com/WordPress/theme-experiments/issues/264

Discussion: continue the Universal Themes conversation from last week’s hangout:

The global styles 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. will not be in 5.8. As 5.8 is a minimum viable productMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia.
@Grogou how can users configure global styles? @poena replied – Per block, per template, with reusable blocks, and patterns. or, why not let the theme author offer the templates that work well with the theme.

There are some ongoing experiments to see what else can be done (via CustomizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings.) but nothing concrete that can’t already be done via 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. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. template pages.

So a mix (using theme.json to build a ‘base style’ with php template pages to execute logic from configuration options set in a classic way via Customizer) is the straightest line for 5.8 without the Gutenberg 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 where Global Styles UI can be leveraged in the FSE.

@aristath mentioned that a lot of concern regarding feature parity between the customizer and the site-editor.
The fact that something can be edited in the site-editor doesn’t necessarily mean that it should also be editable from the customizer.
It is possible to expose all global-styles options in the customizer and save them the way that global-styles get saved, the customizer has the architecture to support that. But someone has to write that bridge, and tbh it’s just not a priority or necessity for anyone at this stage.

@scruffian shared an example of how to change Global Styles in the Customizer: https://github.com/Automattic/themes/pull/3856

@aristath is working on a package that will allow legacy themes to use theme.json : https://github.com/WPTT/theme-json-parser, Being able to use the theme.json file is one step closer to block themes and should allow theme authors to remove a lot of CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site..

#block-based-meeting, #block-based-themes