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As the project has landed in core, there is now a new tracking issue set up for things identified by the community as great follow up work to improve on it.
Mobile Team
Shipping: Block picker search and first iteration of the embed block will be shipping in the next release.
In Progress: Scoping the next phase of Global Style Support work focusing on text-related styles.
Cropping for the site logo needs reviewers PR: 31607.
Working on duotone enhancements we can discuss more during open floor PR: 33466.
Related bug fix for cover block spacing ui PR: 33560.
Open Floor
A test file was added to WP Core in 5.6.0, but added incorrectly, which means that the tests effectively were never run. I’m trying to fix that, but am now finding that 7 out of the 20 tests are failing. Raised by @jrf
We need someone with good knowledge of global styles to help figuring out if the test’s problem is on the PHP or JS side of the global styles.
This is probably a bug introduced by the recent work on the “select all” behavior in the block editor.
@ntsekouras surfaced a problem in PR: 1483 – It seems there will be the need for WP version check in patterns
The problem lies that patterns can have blocks with shape that is not supported in a WP version, but themes are also checked against WP version that are compatible. This isn’t the same WP version usually.
Add new arguments to hook_extra passed by plugin and theme updates to ensure we can rollback to the correct version.
After a plugin/theme is successfully downloaded and extracted, the old plugin/theme folder is moved to wp-content/upgrade/rollback/plugins/PLUGIN or wp-content/upgrade/themes/THEMEwp-content/upgrade/rollback/themes/THEME(thanks Paul Bigai for catching that)
If the plugin/theme was successfully installed, the backup of the previous version we kept in wp-content/upgrade/rollback/ is deleted.
If the plugin/theme was not successfully installed, then we cleanup any remnants of files in wp-content/plugins/PLUGIN (or the corresponding folder for themes), and then we move the backup we kept in the rollbacks folder back to its original location.
Adds info in the site-health screen, to make sure the rollback folder is writable (or can be created if it doesn’t exist)
That is the basic concept. The team ran some tests, helped by @peona as well and it seems to be working.
The main difference with the rollback-update-failure plugin is that this solution moves the plugin/theme folders instead of zipping/unzipping them. This change should help to make the implementation a bit lighter/safer on shared hosts with limited resources.
Before moving forward, I would like to ask the Upgrade/Install Maintainers to have a look at this and discuss together, in the comments of this post, if you agree with this change, if it works, etc…
I am not setting a deadline for the comments, but ideally, I would like to be able to write a merge proposal for 5.9 so I will review the post in mid-JulyAugust (thanks @meher for pointing out that we are at the end of July already 😂) and nudge a bit more 😉
WordPress 5.8 is already here, an exciting release marked by the inclusion of many Full Site Editing features that have been big-picture focuses in recent times. Because of this important achievement, in contrast to normal monthly updates, this post seeks to review the status of Full Site Editing and summarize the next high-level focuses within Gutenberg Phase 2.
Full Site Editing is the lighthouse goal for phase 2 of Gutenberg. As such, it’s good to remember it is a collection of projects that allow site editing with blocks, bringing powerful capabilities for a smooth editing experience.
WordPress 5.8 includes some of these Full Site Editing projects and features; while some of them will continue as ongoing focuses for subsequent Gutenberg releases (⚒️), others can be considered stable and enter a maintenance phase (✅)
Without further ado, let’s look at the current status of the milestones that have guided Full Site Editing work in the last months and the updated scope for Site Editing.
The Site Editing Infrastructure and UI provide foundational work for the rest of FSE projects, mainly in the Site/Template Editor, Template parts, and the numerous APIs that support work around Full Site Editing.
The first two iterations of the site editor milestone introduced editing block themes and all their template files. The ongoing third one offers the possibility of creating custom block templates in classic themes and is available in WordPress 5.8 for those themes that opt-in to the site editing experience. Work will continue to finalize the Site Editor naming and placement: the current Site Editor as we know it in the Gutenberg plugin may evolve for better navigation flows and interactions.
Thanks to feedback from different FSE Outreach Program testing rounds, the next focus for site experience and tooling improvement include:
Global Styles comprises two major areas that fall underneath the global styles umbrella: centralized theme configuration and an interface for manipulating visual aspects of blocks globally.
Theme configuration absorbs things like declaring color palettes, presets, different supports and settings, and toggle on or off the available block design tools (typography, colors, dimensions, etc.). All of this can be managed through the theme.json configuration file and is one of the key features available in WordPress 5.8. After a few iterations and open testing, this feature is considered stable and moved to a maintenance phase.
The other major part of global styles is the user interface to make edits to blocks globally. With theme.json in place, the next release cycle will have the Global Styles UI as one of its main focuses, allowing users to tweak the theme easily. Color handling will be an important focus, not only to better theme switch but also to seamlessly integrate color palettes with patterns.
To support the theme building needs outside of the template and template parts infrastructure, there was a need to create many new blocks centered around theme functions. WordPress 5.8 brings several of these blocks, from Site Title, Site Tagline, and Site Logo that allow users to configure site settings with blocks, to the post-related blocks such as Post Title and Post Date, to be used inside a Query Loop to display post data.
Although new theme blocks may be added as the need arises and the existing ones will receive incremental upgrades, the basics of this milestone are complete.
Among the theme blocks, the Query Loop Block has been a significant area of the site editing focus in the past months, deserving its own milestone. Taking some of the block API infrastructures to the limit, such a powerful block has proven challenging to expose at a user level. As a result of the feedback collected in the FSE Outreach Program, the block has been renamed to clear confusion, and usability enhancements have been implemented before launching it in WordPress 5.8.
With the Query Loop foundations in place, the next iterations will seek to ease the user interactions and flows, even more, thanks to two fundamental Gutenberg tools – block patterns and block variations. The former will continue to help set the inner block structure and content. In contrast, the latter will present the powerful Query Loop’s features in the form of preconfigured blocks and consolidate similar blocks to use the Query Loop Block as their underlying mechanism.
Along with the Query Loop Block, the Navigation Block is another theme block that stands out as a project in its own right. This block has seen great improvements in the last few months, from improved overlays to responsive menus. New blocks are available as well, such as the Home Link block. Shortly, we will see the Navigation block house whole new kinds of blocks thanks to the recent frontend markup adjustments that allow blocks other than links in an accessible way.
Full Site Editing represents a new paradigm in site and theme building in the well-established WordPress ecosystem, and as such, providing the right tools is key to gradual adoption. Tools like the Widgets Editor and Navigation Editor bring block editing capabilities to traditional features that can’t take full advantage of their native block counterpart implementation.
WordPress 5.8 brings the power of blocks to both the Block Widgets Editor and the Customizer. Users will be able to add blocks in widget areas, add widgets and blocks with live preview, and schedule and share directly from the Customizer.
On the other hand, the Navigation Editor has also seen its share of iterative improvements in the last months. Together with the Navigation Block, it will remain an ongoing focus for the next WordPress release cycle.
As mentioned with regards to Query and Navigation blocks, the complexity of the editor increases as site editing capabilities are introduced with advanced block structures and customization options. This highlights the need to expand our APIs and interactions — which are well suited for simple block structures — to better support container blocks.
Another challenging editing experience with the increased number of container and inner blocks is adjusting parent block settings when editing a child block. Users often need to switch between different child and parent blocks to change settings like layout or positioning. In turn, it is necessary to explore Toolbar absorption mechanisms that allow parent blocks to expose their toolbar on their children.
Patterns everywhere
At this stage, it is no secret that block patterns represent considerable potential for users to add many blocks with different preset layouts and settings easily. By using patterns, users don’t need to individually add blocks to achieve rich representations in headers, columns, or Query blocks, as patterns act as a jumpstart blueprint that can be tweaked and adjusted to the user’s needs.
An example of the improved interaction block patterns is demonstrated by the Query block, which allows users to select block patterns in its placeholder state. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the ways patterns can leverage the editing experience, and as such, efforts will continue improving pattern insertion capabilities.
Thanks to the recently released Block Pattern Directory, patterns can be copied and pasted into the block editor; upcoming Gutenberg iterations will connect and retrieve patterns from this directory, allowing users to choose from huge amounts of beautiful patterns without leaving the editor. Both to ease navigating the big number of patterns users will be able to choose from and accommodate increased pattern complexity and richness, such as in Query or Header patterns, revisiting the pattern insertion UI will be an ongoing focus in the months to come.
Several design tools are needed to ensure a wide range of exquisitely crafted patterns can support powerful settings and rich block customizations. These encompass all tools related to the appearance of blocks and range from colors, typography, alignments, and positioning to filters like duotone, cropping, and background media and will need to integrate seamlessly with theme.json mechanics.
Going further, controls like font size, even if exposed as single values to users in the UI, are built behind the scenes to accommodate different viewport ranges. Apart from providing access to the underlying mechanisms through theme.json, responsive-previewing and device-specific editing will be necessary to support this.
To support the ever-increasing number of tools, the sidebar, while secondary in some regards to the block canvas and toolbar, will need to accommodate many of these tools, whereas the Component System will provide a shared design language between all these controls.
While the above items are our focuses, don’t forget that you can always help with triage, testing issues, good first issues, and reviewing PRs. In particular, if you’re interested in helping with triage but don’t know where to start, there’s a course on Learn WordPress for how to do triage on GitHub! Check it out and join us.
If there’s anything we can do to make contributing easier, let us know in the comments or #core-editor chats. While we can’t promise to fix everything, we’d appreciate being aware of any blockers.
Two weeks have passed since the last Gutenberg release, which means a new version is available! Gutenberg 11.1 adds the ability to edit a block border easily, enables drag and drop support for the List View component, and includes many bug fixes centered around the Widgets Editor and Block Library.
NPM Packages: Introduce release types to npm publishing script. (33329)
Plugin: Introduce tools folder with configuration files. (33281)
Workflows:
Release Workflow: Remove “experimental” status from WP 5.8 stable items. (33214)
Re-enable manually triggered workflows on forks. (32821)
Use NPM caching built into action/setup-node. (33190)
Performance Benchmark
The following benchmark compares performance for a particularly sizeable post (~36,000 words, ~1,000 blocks) over the last releases. Such a large post isn’t representative of the average editing experience but is adequate for spotting variations in performance.
Version
Loading Time
KeyPress Event (typing)
Gutenberg 11.1
6.38s
26.12ms
Gutenberg 11.0
6.06s
29.55ms
WordPress 5.7
8.52s
36.26ms
Kudos to all the contributors that helped with the release! 👏
Do you have something to propose for the agenda, or a specific item relevant to the usual agenda items above?
Please leave a comment, and say whether or not you’ll be in the chat, so the group can either give you the floor or bring up your topic for you accordingly.
This meeting happens in the #core channel. To join the meeting, you’ll need an account on the Making WordPress Slack.
Document edge cases with the new image_editor_output_formatfilter – #5366, #53668, #35725
Fix JS error in Media Library when infinite scroll enabled – #53672
When resizing WebP images set the compression to “lossy” by default. Fixes a bug where the compression was set to “lossless” when the uploaded WebP images have extended file format (VP8X) – #53653
Privacy
Ensure the copy button actually copies the suggested privacy policy text – #53652, #52891
Upgrade/Install
Add additional files to $_old_files for 5.8 – #53367
Widgets
Prevent widgets unintentionally being moved to the inactive sidebar – #53657
Replace wp.editor references in the legacy text widget – #53437
Use wp_sidebar_description() to retrieve a sidebar’s description – #53646
The major version release process can take a bit more time than the Betas or Release Candidates do, particularly if we run into any last minute issues that need to be addressed.
A key part of the release process is checking that the ZIP packages work on all the different server configurations available. If you have some of the less commonly used servers available for testing (IIS, in particular), that would be super helpful. Servers running older versions of PHP and MySQL will also need testing.
There are two ways to help test the package:
Use WP-CLI to test: wp core update https://wordpress.org/wordpress-5.8.zip
Since the image lazy-loading feature was originally added to WordPress core in 5.5, by default every post content image as well as every image rendering using the wp_get_attachment_image() function (which includes featured images) is lazy-loaded. This optimization follows the typical implementation of the feature in other projects, without consideration for whether an image appears above or below the fold. Due to the available metrics at the time it was decided to leave fine-grained control over opting out certain images from being lazy-loaded to theme authors, since the position of images heavily depends on the current theme layout. See also the following paragraph in the original announcement post:
Theme developers are recommended to granularly handle loading attributes for images anytime they rely on wp_get_attachment_image() or another function based on it (such as the_post_thumbnail() or get_custom_logo()), depending on where they are used within templates. For example, if an image is placed within the header.php template and is very likely to be in the initial viewport, it is advisable to skip the loading attribute for that image.
Omitting the loading attribute on certain elements
As mentioned before, WordPress core is unable to reliably assess whether an image is going to appear above or below the fold, since it depends on the currently active theme. Furthermore, the loading attributes are added on the server-side, which has no notion on the influencing client factors like viewport size. Because of those reasons, fine-grained control over lazy-loading images (and iframes) still remains with theme authors. However, we can fine tune WordPress core’s lazy-loading implementation to behave in a way that improves the situation for the vast majority of cases, to achieve better LCP values out of the box.
Now, one could argue that lazy-loading should be entirely removed again to avoid any negative impact on LCP. However, that would also remove all the benefits that lazy-loading comes with, which is reducing bandwidth and wasting fewer network resources, which in itself can impact Core Web Vitals (CWV) metrics. The preferable default behavior here would be to find a solid middle ground between those trade-offs. This leads to the following goal for the WordPress core implementation:
The first “x” content image(s) should not be lazy-loaded by default, with “x” being as high as possible so that there is little to no LCP regression and as low as possible so that there is little to no regression in the total bytes loaded.
(Note that this also includes iframes, but they are less commonly used as hero elements, so for simplicity this post mentions primarily images.)
To determine the right value for “x” (i.e. the number of images/iframes to omit from being lazy-loaded by default), I conducted an analysis using two versions of a small prototype plugin which prevents the loading=”lazy” attribute from being added to the first 1 or 2 content images respectively. The analysis relied on the following methodology:
Test across the 50 most popular themes according to the wordpress.org popular themes search
Test on a demo site without any plugins active (except for the lazy-loading prototype plugin), for an archive view with 5 posts (where every post has a featured image) and for a single post view (where the post has a featured image as well as 5 images within its content), i.e. 2 different types of URLs
Test for 2 viewports, “mobile” and “desktop”
Use WebPageTest for the individual scenarios (200 in total), with 9 test runs for each scenario in order to counter variance and rely on the median result
That analysis produced the following results:
Omitting the first content image from being lazy-loaded resulted in a median LCP improvement of 7% (1,877ms compared to 2,020ms with current core behavior) and a median image bytes increase of 0% (368KB compared to 369KB with current core behavior). → Omitting the first content image clearly results in an LCP improvement while not noticeably regressing on image bytes saved.
Omitting the first two content images from being lazy-loaded resulted in a median LCP improvement of 5% (1,927ms compared to 2,020ms with current core behavior) and a median image bytes increase of 2% (378KB compared to 369KB with current core behavior). → Omitting the first two content images produces worse results for both metrics than only omitting the first one, i.e. it is better to only skip lazy-loading for the first content image, and therefore no additional tests with larger numbers of images not being lazy-loading are needed.
Both fixes actually perform even better in LCP compared to the results with lazy-loading completely disabled. This confirms that completely disabling lazy-loading is not a solution to the problem.
Drilling further into the results for omitting the first content image, 42% of scenarios result in a median LCP improvement of greater than 10%, with the maximum improvement being 33%. 5% of scenarios result in the median LCP being more than 10% worse, with the maximum here being 21%. → While the median LCP improvement across all themes is only 7%, there are larger notable wins for a significant number of themes, while notable losses are minimal.
Relative LCP change of the fix compared to the current behavior across all tested scenarios
Following up on the findings on the LCP regression from lazy-loading as well as the analysis about the potential fix, the following refinement to the lazy-loading implementation in core is being proposed for WordPress 5.9:
Instead of lazy-loading all images and iframes by default, the very first content image (also considering featured images) or content iframe should not be lazy-loaded.
This is a more sensitive default than what the current implementation uses, that on average and at scale will result in better LCP performance out of the box, while keeping necessary bandwidth low.
Despite this change of the default behavior, responsibility for fine grained control of which elements should be lazy-loaded remains with theme authors. As a theme author, you are still recommended to specify a loading attribute value for images presented by the theme. Particularly pay attention if your theme relies on less standard layouts, e.g. a grid or slider view of posts or if post content only appears far down the page.
A Tracticket for adding this enhancement to core has been opened in #53675 for further review and discussion.
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