Themes team meeting agenda for February 13, 2024

The themes team convenes on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month. The first meeting for this month is scheduled for February 13.

The meeting takes place in the #themereview channel on WordPress SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. and you need an account to participate.

Channel: #themereview | Time: Tuesday, February 13, 2024, 15:00 UTC

In addition to the predetermined agendas, we allocate time at the end for an open floor session where you are welcome to ask questions or share any themes-related information.

We highly encourage all members, as well as anyone with an interest, to participate. If you have specific agenda items you would like to include, please feel free to add them in the comment section below.

Meeting Agendas

  • Weekly updates
  • Open Floor

Looking forward to seeing you at the meeting!

#agenda, #themes-team

Recap of Hallway Hangout on Intrinsic Design

On February 8th, 2024 contributors came together in a Hallway Hangout.  The discussion was focused on understanding intrinsic design principles and some challenges of implementing them in WordPress themes and plugins.

Participants: @fabiankaegy @poena @greenshady @karmatosed @colorful-tones @onemaggie @sierratr Andrea Roenning, GustovoH. and @bph (Faciliator)

Thank you to all for a great discussion!

Here is the video of the recording:

Transcript is available on YouTube.

About intrinsic design

Intrinsic design is an approach to web design that aims to make layouts adapt to different screen sizes in a fluid way, without relying on predefined breakpoints. With intrinsic design, individual design elements like blocks are designed to optimize themselves for any available space, rather than being targeted to specific screen widths. This allows content to reflow and adapt naturally to different devices and screen sizes.

To dive deeper into the topic, read:

Summary of the Discussion

The discussion covered intrinsic design principles and their implementation in WordPress themes and blocks. Participants discussed how intrinsic design aims to make layouts fluidly adapt without breakpoints, allowing elements to optimize themselves based on available space.

Challenges of responsive design in 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/ were examined, such as inability to control hard-coded breakpoints and lack of tools to define minimum/maximum widths. Potential solutions using upcoming features like container queries and states were explored.

Issues hiding/showing content and images on mobile were debated, as was the need to understand user needs across devices. Browser support limitations for newer techniques were also a factor.

Overall, the conversation focused on better implementing intrinsic techniques in WordPress, workarounds for current limitations, and how upcoming coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. changes could help address responsive design challenges. Participants shared ideas and examples from their own work to improve intrinsic support moving forward.

Discussions online and resources

Upcoming Developer Hours

February 13, 2024, at 16:00 UTC
JavaScript for modern WordPress development

February 27, 2024, at 16:00 UTC
How to build modern web layouts with WordPress blocks

Props to @greenshady for review.

Themes team meeting agenda for January 23, 2024

The themes team convenes on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month. The first meeting for this month is scheduled for January 23.

The meeting takes place in the #themereview channel on WordPress SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. and you need an account to participate.

Channel: #themereview | Time: Tuesday, January 23, 2024, 15:00 UTC

In addition to the predetermined agendas, we allocate time at the end for an open floor session where you are welcome to ask questions or share any themes-related information.

We highly encourage all members, as well as anyone with an interest, to participate. If you have specific agenda items you would like to include, please feel free to add them in the comment section below.

Meeting Agendas

  • Weekly updates
  • Allow larger theme authors to submit multiple themes (Meta ticket)
  • The current state of 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)-ready Themes (Meta ticket)
  • Provide information about committing theme updates directly to SVNSVN Apache Subversion (often abbreviated SVN, after its command name svn) is a software versioning and revision control system. Software developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation. Its goal is to be a mostly compatible successor to the widely used Concurrent Versions System (CVS). WordPress core and the wordpress.org released code are all centrally managed through SVN. https://subversion.apache.org/. (Meta ticket)
  • Open Floor

Looking forward to seeing you at the meeting!

#agenda, #meeting, #themes-team

New Block-Focused Theme Handbook Docs and What’s Coming in 2024

I hope everyone had a good break over the holidays. I know I caught up on some much-needed rest and am now excited to get back into the swing of doing fun things with WordPress themes.

Now it’s time to discuss the current progress and next steps of one of our biggest projects of 2024: the Theme Handbook overhaul.

What Is the Theme Handbook Overhaul?

This is a project that the theming community agreed to take on last year. Its goal was to give the Theme Handbook content a refresh, primarily focusing on modern 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. theme development.

You can read the initial proposal and previous project updates here:

The ongoing work is tracked via the Theme Handbook Overhaul tracking ticket on 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/.

The Project’s Progress

In 2023, five new/updated chapters were published in the handbook:

The primary focus of these first five chapters is to introduce theme creators to the block theming system. Most of this documentation is 100% new. If you haven’t browsed the handbook for a while, now is a great time to catch up!

There are also eight draft articles that have yet to be published.

In terms of “chapter count,” that’s nearly half of the project. But if looking at the actual new content that needed to be created, it’s probably closer to 2/3 of the way toward the finish line.

The Next Steps

The plan is to complete the entire overhaul by the end of Quarter 2 (June 30) of 2024. I believe we can get the bulk of the new content published or drafted in Q1, leaving most of Q2 for final touches and cleanup.

In the coming months, there are still six chapters left to create or update:

  • Patterns (recently added to the outline)
  • Classic Themes
  • Advanced Topics (mostly drafted)
  • 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)
  • Guides
  • Contributing

The Classic Themes, Advanced Topics, and Guides chapters are mostly content updates and a bit of reorganization. These are what I’d call “good first issues” for anyone who wants to contribute but is not ready to write a full documentation article on their own.

The Patterns chapter was recently added to the outline because patterns are a first-class tool in WordPress that will only continue to become more powerful. There is currently a single Block Patterns doc, but it needs to be expanded into multiple articles that showcase each pattern feature. If you like to tinker with patterns, this could be a fun chapter to contribute to.

One area where the project really needs a volunteer is for the Accessibility chapter. It’d be great to have an expert in the field to review and expand upon the existing documentation.

Get Involved

To get involved, all you need to do is:

You can reach out for help with this in the #docs or #themereview SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channels. You can also pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” me (@greenshady) directly if you have questions.

Props to @kafleg for reviewing this post.

#theme-documentation

Themes Team Meeting Notes – January 09, 2024

Howdy Mates, welcome to 2024!

The meeting notes are from the themes team discussion.

Attendees:

:one:Weekly and Year 2023 updates

In the past 7 days,

  • 739 tickets were opened
  • 743 tickets were closed
    • 706 tickets were made live.
      • 32 new Themes were made live.
      • 674 Theme updates were made live.
      • 0 more were approved but are waiting to be made live.
    • 37 tickets were not-approved.
    • 0 tickets were closed-newer-version-uploaded.

Note: These stats include both the new theme tickets and updated theme tickets as well.

The themes team published weekly updates about tickets and HelpScout emails. Here is the theme statistic for the past 7 days. The most current stats can be found here.

If you haven’t checked the Themes team year 2023 review, I strongly recommend checking it.

During the meeting we welcomed our new team reps they are continuing from 2023. During the meeting, I mentioned, “We are just team representatives and we look for your equal support and contribution.”

View more about team reps here.

:three:New requirements for settings pages & onboarding in themes

During the meeting @acosmin said that “we can add the requirements on the requirements page and see how it goes”. We’ll allow theme authors to add setting pages and onboarding in themes.

Recommended readings:

Also, we would like to request theme authors, if you add such a setting page, please reach out to @acosmin, @kafleg or @greenshady for a quick look and review it exclusively.

On a side note, Justin said, “I have some thoughts on settings pages. Would it be beneficial to have an Slot in-the-Site Editor navigation panel? If there’s not already a ticket, that would be worth exploring. That way, there’s a more dedicated place for custom settings screens in the Site Editor. Just jotting this down for the future, but anyone is welcome to explore that on their own too”.

He added, “I think it would help resolve some of the 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. theme settings screen discussion in a way that works well with the block editor. I’ll run the idea by a few folks”.

We would like to see how theme authors will come up with the idea implementation.

:four:WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. (Nepal and Asia)

WordCamp Nepal is going to happen on January 12 & 13. The first day of the event is Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/.. @anilbasnet and @ughimire1 are the themes team table lead. If you are attending, don’t miss out on joining the themes table.

For WordCamp Asia 2024, we are still looking for one table lead for the themes team and two table leads for team patterns. If you are attending and interested in the table leads, let me know. You can also comment in the below comment section and show your interest. WordCamp Asia will happen in Taipei, Taiwan on this march 7-9.

:five: Open floor

During the open floor, Justin shared that he is planning to write a make themes blog post to share the updates about Theme Handbook Overhaul.

#meeting-notes, #themes-team