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WordPress 5.4 is shaping up to be the best WordPress 2020 has seen!
As a user, you’ll see new blocks and enhancements in the block editor, new embeds, and improvements in the WordPress Admin experience.
As a developer, you’ll see 122 enhancements and feature requests, 210 bug fixes, and more! Of course, all those improvements mean code changes, which could in turn require you to make updates to your site, plugin, or theme.
So take a look through this Field Guide, and see what’s relevant to you and your users, among the many improvements coming in 5.4…
Accessibility
On the 14 updates related to Accessibility in 5.4, you’ll want to particularly note changes to the WordPress Admin Bar, to the calendar and recent comments widgets, on the Menu screen, and bugs reported by the WPCampus accessibility report.
Block Editor
The block editor has continued its rapid iteration since WordPress 5.0. Now it has Gutenberg version 7.5 bundled with WordPress 5.4; that’s ten releases all bundled into WordPress 5.4 (versions 6.6, 6.7, 6.8, 6.9, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4 and 7.5)! Bug fixes and performance improvements from Gutenberg versions 7.6 will also be part of 5.4.
The WordPress 5.4 Beta 1 post highlights a lot of new features and improvements across these releases, though you’ll also want to note the impressive achievement of 14% loading-time reduction and 51% time-to-type reduction (for a particularly long post of ~36,000 words, ~1,000 blocks) since WordPress 5.3.
Below you’ll find details on two new blocks, button component updates, block collections, default fullscreen mode for new installs/devices, custom keyboard shortcuts, general block editor API updates, new block variations API, a new gradient theme API, markup and style-related changes, and a new @wordpress/create-block package for block scaffolding.
On the 14 updates of the Customizer component, WordPress 5.4 improves accessibility of focused elements as a follow-up to WordPress 5.3 Admin CSS changes, adds documentation of existing Customizer functions and hooks, removes apple-touch-icon-precomposed deprecated meta tags, and improves Menu items selection logic.
Please note that some unused Customizer classes are now formally deprecated:
On the 5 updates in the Menus component, WordPress 5.4 improves keyboard accessibility of the Menu items selection tab panel and streamlines the user interface.
If your plugins add custom fields to menu items, you’ll want to update your code to use the new wp_nav_menu_item_custom_fields hook:
On the 22 updates related to the REST API, WordPress 5.4 now supports “OR” taxonomy relation parameter in Post Controller, adds selective link embedding and introduces some changes in the WP_REST_Server method. Read below for more details on these updates:
On the 3 updates to the Shortcodes component, WordPress 5.4 introduces documentation improvements and a new function: apply_shortcodes. This function is an alias of do_shortcode, which is still supported.
On the 9 updates to the Widgets component, WordPress 5.4 introduces accessibility and user interface enhancements on the Widgets Admin screen and changes in the Recent Comments and Calendar Widgets HTML markup.
There are even more goodies in 5.4, like the new wp-env (a zero config tool for painless local WordPress environments), enhancements to favicon handling, better information about errors in wp_login_failed, a new site ID in multisite’s newblog_notify_siteadmin filter, a new TikTok video embed and removal of the CollegeHumor embed, storing the original URL of media attachments in _source_url post meta, improved accessibility by loading the Admin Bar with wp_body_open, avoiding duplicate IDs in the Recent Comments widget, a new parameter in the lostpassword_post action in retrieve_password(), theme headers supporting “Requires at least” and “Requires PHP” declarations, and the delete_posts capability won’t trigger PHP notices for custom post types. Read through the dev notes below to see details on all these changes coming in 5.4.
Over 198 bugs, 121 enhancements and feature requests, and 8 blessed tasks have been marked as fixed in WordPress 5.4. Some additional ones to highlight include:
Bootstrap/Load: Enhancement to favicon handling (#47398)
Bundled Theme: Twenty Twenty: Add social icon for WhatsApp (#49098)
Comments: Add “In response to …” before threaded comments in comment feed (#43429)
Now that 5.4 has been officially kicked off, bug scrubs will happen weekly all the way up to the final release. Keep an eye on this schedule – it will change often to reflect the latest information.
These scrubs are separate and in addition to the normal scrubbing and triage by individual components. Some of those sessions include:
Design Triage: Every Monday 17:30 UTC at #design Gutenberg Design Triage: Every Tuesday 17:00 UTC at #design Accessibility Scrub: Every Friday 14:00 UTC at #accessibility
Also, the ongoing APAC-friendly #core bug scrub session every Thursday at 06:00 UTC will continue during the cycle, alternating focus between core and editor.
Next, the Accessibility team has announced a few extra scrubs for the 5.4 cycle. You can read about those here.
Finally, a reminder that anyone — Yes, you! — can host a bug scrub at anytime. You can work through any tickets you’re comfortable with. In fact, if you plan one that’s 5.4-focused, we’ll add it to the schedule here along with your name. Finally, you’ll get well deserved props in the weekly Dev Chat, as well as in the #props Slack channel!
All open tickets for 5.4, in order of priority, can be found here. Tickets that haven’t seen any love in a while are in particular need. Those can be found in this query.
If you’d like to lead a bug scrub or have any questions or concerns about the schedule, please leave a comment or reach out to me directly.
@jorgefilipecosta gave a big thank you to everyone that helped the big effort on writting the editor dev notes.
@jorgefilipecosta ended the topic by sharing the following information:
For the next RC currently, we have three issues that should be fixed. Two of the issues have a PR that needs review. Another one does not have a PR yet. The status of these tasks can be checked on https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/projects/39
Is reviewing and testing the new PR that provides menu endpoints in Gutenberg # https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/20292. It is a big PR and while it is tested in the feature plugin any extra eyes are welcome!
Is experimenting with WebGL blocks right now and working around the constraints. Is trying to get people’s thoughts/opinions on a Gutenberg feature request he has related to rendering in the background and providing a single requestAnimationFrame render loop for multiple blocks https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/20483.
Open floor
Custom text color format
@paaljoachim brought to the discussion the fact that the text color may or may not be a main format.
@jorgefilipecosta clarified that the fact that the text color appears on the main formats when a color is selected and disappears from the main formats if no color is selected is not a bug. It was an implemented behavior to avoid too many main formats but at the same time give relevance to the format if color is chosen. We may discuss this behavior in an issue and it may make sense to change.
We started by discussing if we should change the meeting time to accommodate daylight savings changes coming soon. No decision has been made yet; if you have an interest in this meeting and changing/not changing the hour would enable you (or not) to attend, please leave a comment below!
Open Floor
@notlaura started by asking how best to kick off a CSS audit as discussed last week. Based on last week’s discussion, I had already created a Trac ticket to start thinks off: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/49582 and asked everyone to add to it if I missed anything.
@notlaura asked about workflows for regression testing. There is no automated visual testing in core yet, and we discussed setting up visual snapshot testing before making any changes to existing CSS.
We agreed that adding snapshot testing will not block the audit, as the outcome of the audit will be a set of recommendations, but we should have tests in place before we start acting on those recommendations.
We also discussed how to divide up the audit into sub-tasks, and agreed to create smaller tickets to tackle each part as needed.
Now, the idea is to gather more contributors around the feature plugin and get your feedback on the project.
For this, let’s kick-off regular meetings in the brand new #core-auto-updates Slack channel.
The first meeting will be held on Tuesday March 10th, 2020 at 18:00 UTC and will serve as an introduction to the project and as an opportunity to discuss the next steps.
Proposed agenda:
WP Auto-updates feature general scope
Current status
Next steps
Openfloor / issues and pull requests reviews
If you have anything specific that you’d like to propose being discussed in this meeting, feel free to leave a comment below.
@audrasjb noted he’ll add a field guide link to the beta-tester dashboard widget. He might also link to important dev notes directly. (Ed. note: The Guide already links do every dev note from the 5.4 cycle, so if you bookmark it, you’ll have one-click access to them all from there.)
@peterwilsoncc branched trunk as soon as RC1 landed, meaning we are officially in alpha for 5.5!
If you have a ticket or a feature, or anything you’d like to see land in WordPress 5.5, please get busy now. By the time we start discussing 5.5 in devchat later this year, we’ll be on the countdown to beta — four weeks from Beta 1, which is the hard feature freeze.
At the same time, please keep testing 5.4.
Auto-updates feature plugin has a new home on Slack
#core-auto-updates is the new Slack channel for conversations about the new auto-updates feature plugin!
You may recall that auto-updates is a goal for 2020 and was originally slated for 5.4—but a consensus formed around the idea that the feature needed more testing and feedback.
5.4 RC2 lands Tuesday, March 10
As of RC1, we have a hard string freeze. Plus, all commits need peer review. That said, you can always contribute to inline documentation and build- tooling changes.
Components Check-In
TheComponents page is getting some revisions, so it’s out of sight temporarily.
Daylight Savings Time comes to the US this weekend and to Europe in three weeks. The question: whether and when to adjust the chat time? Some folks recommended keeping the time at 21:00 UTC, Daylight Time or not. But as @davidbaumwald pointed out, the Contributor’s handbook mandates a time change. So look for that change in the next several weeks.
Ticket #49518 is an enhancement to add four i18n hooks. @pbiron explained that enhancements need to land before beta, so the ticket might land in 5.5.
Update the Core blocks styles to support the Global styles variables.
Define and document the available settings.
Patterns
These are different from the Block Variations API (that was initially named patterns as well). These are pre-made post/page sections that can be inserted and edited.
With WordPress 5.4 entering the RC (Release Candidate) stage it’s time for the #core-privacy team to plan next steps. Along with planning privacy updates for 5.5, we’ll be discussing next steps for the Consent API (feature plugin), GDPR Data Request Form (feature plugin) and Compliance Tab during our office hours.
Come and join us for our office hours at our usual time this Wednesday, 04 March, at 1900 UTC on our Slack channel. All are welcome.
