Core Editor Improvement: Cascading impact of improvements to featured images

When a new feature is added, it’s easy to see what the feature does right now rather than the many things it allows you to do, particularly when combined with other tools. This is especially true as design tools continue to evolve! This post offers a quick dive into how improvements to the Featured Image block lead to more possibilities for content creation. 

Greater control of posts layout

Thanks to some recent changes to the Featured Image block, the Query Loop block just got even more powerful. As a reminder, the Query Loop block is an advanced block that allows you to display posts based on various parameters and was released in WordPress 5.8. Within the Query Loop block, different blocks, like the Featured Image block, can be placed within it to show the Featured Images for each post listed. While you’ve been able to control the general placement of the Featured Image, until Gutenberg 11.3, you couldn’t control the basics of the resulting image. This came up a few times during testing with the FSE Outreach Program as a pain point with folks wanting deeper customization options. Now, you can control the sizing and scale of the image to your liking opening up the beginnings of a new world of layout options!

Video showing the new Featured Image Block options within the Query Loop block.

More options when creating templates

This change also impacts anyone using the Template Editor as you can now customize how the Featured Image shows up in a template you created. This is just a start too with more size tooling planned for the Featured Image block. Most recently too, the ability to add duotone filters to spruce up your images with endless color options was included in Gutenberg 11.4. Just like with the Query Loop block example above, this allows you to add a Featured Image block with a duotone filter added and then apply that to any post or page you’d like so all posts have the same duotone shading:

Video showing the new Featured Image Block options within the Template Editor.

Thank you @shaunandrews for the design assist & @kellychoffman for help with the copy.

#core-editor, #core-editor-improvement

Editor chat summary: 8 September, 2021

This post summarizes the weekly editor chat meeting (agenda here) held in Slack. Moderated by @andraganescu.

Announcements

Gutenberg 11.5 RC launched today (Sep 8)

@mikeschroder released Gutenberg 11.5 RC. You can take it for a spin from here.

Important resources for the incoming period of time

@priethor added some details about where we should look for guidance around the incoming updates to WordPress in light of the 5.9 release:

There will be an upcoming What’s Next in Gutenberg post based on the preliminary road. It’s worth noting the “What’s Next” intent is to highlight issues where contributors can help, whereas the high-level plan is defined in the preliminary road post.

Key Project Updates

Navigation Editor

@get_dave shared this week’s update:

Mobile

From mobile, @hypest offered the updates:

 Shipped

  • Block picker search.
  • Inline previews for YouTube and Twitter embeds.
  • Alignment options for embeds.
  • New experimental Gallery block.

In Progress

  • Embed block.
  • GSS Font size, line height, colors.

Components

@mciampini shared some updates from the folks working on the components package:

Shipping:

Notable fixes:

In Progress:

Task Coordination

Feel free to add items to this post if you weren’t able to make the meeting.

@ntsekouras

@joen

@mamaduka

  • Updated documentation to replace withSelect HOC references with useSelect.
  • Worked with Riad to fix code data issue with include query parameter.
  • Checked on approved PRs, merged some, and left comments on others to see if authors have time to address the feedback. (Sorry if you received more notifications than usual)

I would appreciate feedback on the following PRs:

@get_dave

@jorgefilipecosta

  • During the last week I updated the design of the mosaic view, I iterated on the engine to allow blocks to be aware of global styles, I proposed the PR to enhance the design of the new color picker and I did multiple PR reviews. I also started the effort to replace tinycolor with colord.
  • For the next week I place on continuing the color library replacement, Iterate on the color picker design and pick another task related to the global styles new design.

@zieladam

@annezazu

@mciampini I plan on:

@oandregal

  • I’ve been working on enabling the global stylesheet for all themes and other minor improvements. Prepared a PR to make sure themes with theme.json load the styles fine in the customizer as well as the theme directory.
  • In the area of alignments: landed a PR that makes the wide control only available if the theme provides a wide size and prepared another for fixing floats (left, center, right) for blocks that are not part of a container.

Open Floor

Will PHP minimum required version change in WordPress 5.9?

@anil (Anil Sardemann) asked about the future min. PHP requirements of 5.9. @hellofromtonya explained that there are no plans to change the minimum supported PHP version in WordPress 5.9 since still more than 5% of WordPress runs on PHP 5.6.

Help with the future of Block Theme Switching

@annezazu brought more attention to the FSE Program Exploration: Help with the future of Block Theme Switching. This is a very new approach in that it’s all about gathering insights to help shape the potential designs rather than testing a specific flow. It’s neat to be able to be involved this early in solving a problem. Check it out, share your thoughts, and get creative!

Help needed with review

@faizan asked for a review on his patch on Ticket 50074

#core-editor, #core-editor-summary, #summary, #themereview

Dev Chat Agenda for Sept 8, 2021

Here is the agenda for this week’s developer meeting to occur at Wednesday, September 8, 2021 at 08:00 PM UTC.

Blog Post Highlights and announcements

Bringing to your attention some interesting reads and some call for feedback and/or volunteers:

Components check-in and status updates

  • Check-in with each component for status updates.
  • Poll for components that need assistance.

Open Floor

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.

#5-8-1, #5-9, #agenda, #core, #dev-chat

Upgrade/Install Meeting Notes, September 7

Quiet but productive chat, only two attendees, @afragen and @francina, but here is a quick recap 🙂 Slack logs.

#51857

@afragen stress tested it but didn’t find any concerning blockers. I asked @sergeybiryukov about commit: he is going to do another round of code review tomorrow, September 8, and if everything looks good, it will be committed. The solution addresses Outcome 1 and 2 of the initial feature proposal.

Outcome 3 – Have managed updates (database migrations)

This is going into the icebox momentarily. It needs a new API to work. If anyone is interested in picking it up, join our meetings on Tuesdays, at Tuesday, September 7, 2021 at 05:00 PM UTC.

Outcome 4 – Create a unified JSON convention for requirements and dependencies.

This nine-year-old issue was revived. Worth reading through it all.

Here is @afragen TL;DR

  1. Any plugin that requires a dependency should degrade gracefully if that dependency is not present.
  2. Dependencies should have notices to install and later activate the dependency.
  3. Some notification of which plugin is a dependency of what other plugin.

There is also the potential for abuse, with plugins reporting dependencies that aren’t really dependencies.

Andy also suggested making a proof of concept plugin, instead of creating a core patch.

What say you?

Do you want to add to the conversation? Please comment on the Trac ticket (beware, comments in GH will be shown in Trac, but not the other way around, so please use Trac, thank you 🙏). We are in the “feedback, validate, outreach, test, inform, reply to questions” loop stage. Join us!

See you next week 👋

#core-auto-updates, #updater, #upgrade-install

Upgrade/Install component meeting agenda for September 07, 2021

The next meeting is scheduled on Tuesday, September 7, 2021 at 05:00 PM UTC and will take place on #core-auto-updates Slack channel.

The aim of the chat is to check the status of the [Feature project] Updates on updating the updaters.

Got something to propose for the agenda? Please leave a comment below.

See you later!

#core-auto-updates, #updater, #upgrade-install

Editor Chat Agenda: 8 September 2021

Facilitator and notetaker: @andraganescu

This is the agenda for the weekly editor chat scheduled for Wednesday, September 8 2021, 04:00 PM GMT+1.

This meeting is held in the #core-editor channel in the Making WordPress Slack.

If you are not able to attend the meeting, you are encouraged to share anything relevant for the discussion:

  • If you have an update for the main site editing projects, please feel free to share as a comment or come prepared for the meeting itself.
  • If you have anything to share for the Task Coordination section, please leave it as a comment on this post.
  • If you have anything to propose for the agenda or other specific items related to those listed above, please leave a comment below.

#agenda, #core-editor, #core-editor-agenda, #meeting

CSS Chat Summary: 02 September 2021

The meeting took place here on Slack. @danfarrow facilitated and wrote up these notes.

Announcements & Housekeeping

  • @danfarrow shared a document he worked on after last week’s meeting: a CSS Chat Facilitator’s Guide
  • The document includes a facilitator schedule – anybody interested in running a future CSS Chat or CSS Triage session is very welcome to add their name!
  • @notlaura let us know that her attendance will be spottier than usual for the next couple of months, but we are lucky to have had some new attendees join the meetings recently

CSS Custom Properties (#49930)

On that encouraging note the meeting drew to a close. Thanks everyone!

#core-css, #summary

A Week in Core – September 6, 2021

Welcome back to a new issue of Week in Core. Let’s take a look at what changed on Trac between August 30 and September 6, 2021.

  • 23 commits
  • 61 contributors
  • 41 tickets created
  • 12 tickets reopened
  • 52 tickets closed

The Core team is currently working on the next point (5.8.1) and major (5.9) releases.

Ticket numbers are based on the Trac timeline for the period above. The following is a summary of commits, organized by component and/or focus.

Code changes

Build/Test Tools

  • Double escape quotation marks() for Slack “messages” – #52644
  • Clean css/dist as part of the webpack build step – #53719
  • Add missing @covers tags for Tests_Admin_IncludesComment#39265
  • Add missing @covers tags for Tests_Admin_wpCommunityEvents#39265
  • Add missing @covers tags for actions’ tests – #39265

Code Modernization

  • Code Modernization: Fix parameter name mismatches for parent/child classes in WP_List_Table::column_default()#51553
  • Apply coding standards on CSS#53866

Customize

  • Add wp-embed-responsive class to body if using widgets block editor – #53609

Documentation

  • Correct the post_submitbox_minor_actions hook description – #54045
  • Fix typo in a comment in WP_Customize_Manager::get_return_url()#53399
  • Improve documentation in wp-signup.php#41566
  • Move @since notes from the safe_style_css filter to the safecss_filter_attr() function – #53731
  • Provide a more accurate description for a few script and style functions – #54044
  • Сlarify that term_id is a valid value for the $field parameter of get_term_by()#54065

Editor

  • Update block editor packages for WordPress 5.8.1 – #54052, #52818

Media

  • Remove documentation detailing specific edge cases in the image_editor_output_format filter – #53955
  • Apply the wp_editor_set_quality filter not only when loading an image in the editor but also when saving an converted image, after the mime-type of the output image has changed – #53667
  • Media: fix showing of the “Filter Media” filds when replacing an image from the media modal – #53833

Site Health

  • Remove MySQL query cache size from the Site Health Info screen – #53845

Widgets

  • Pass correct context to get_block_categories() calls – #53757
  • Rename and soft deprecate retrieve_widgets()#53811
  • Show title and media select fields in Accessibility Mode – #53641

Props

Thanks to the 61 people who contributed to WordPress Core on Trac last week: @audrasjb (8), @hellofromTonya (5), @pbearne (4), @jrf (4), @azaozz (4), @sabernhardt (4), @desrosj (3), @zieladam (2), @walbo (2), @kevin940726 (2), @johnbillion (2), @andraganescu (2), @netweb (2), @sergeybiryukov (2), @peterwilsoncc (2), @mukesh27 (2), @circlecube (2), @zodiac1978 (1), @noisysocks (1), @antonvlasenko (1), @terraling (1), @dariak (1), @vladytimy (1), @bedas (1), @ramonopoly (1), @timothyblynjacobs (1), @mikeschroder (1), @mkaz (1), @mhuntdesign (1), @hudson-atwell (1), @mark-k (1), @alexstine (1), @Enchiridion (1), @mt8biz (1), @westonruter (1), @jayupadhyay01 (1), @joen (1), @aristath (1), @toro_unit (1), @juanmaguitar (1), @gazchap (1), @tmatsuur (1), @muhammadfaizanhaidar (1), @ankitmaru (1), @pbiron (1), @ayeshrajans (1), @hareesh-pillai (1), @oandregal (1), @gziolo (1), @ntsekouras (1), @jblz (1), @talldanwp (1), @ribaricplusplus (1), @youknowriad (1), @paaljoachim (1), @kreppar (1), @ellatrix (1), @ajlende (1), and @mamaduka (1).

Congrats and welcome to our 7 (!) new contributors of the week! @terraling, @bedas, @hudson-atwell, @Enchiridion, @juanmaguitar, @gazchap, and @muhammadfaizanhaidar ♥️

Core committers: @sergeybiryukov (8), @hellofromtonya (5), @desrosj (4), @azaozz (2), @ryelle (1), @noisysocks (1), and @peterwilsoncc (1).

#5-8-1, #5-9, #core, #week-in-core

WordPress 5.9 Planning Roundup

Happy September no matter where you are in the world! Since we’re halfway through the alpha period for the next big release of WordPress, it’s time to gather all the pieces of planning into one place. This post will include all the best guesses and targets for dates, features, and squads.

This release will follow the same general cadence as the other releases this year, with a long alpha period (132 days) and a short beta period (14 days) before the release candidate phase.

Proposed WordPress 5.9 Schedule

These are my best guesses at the milestones:

MilestoneDateDays from
Alpha (trunk open for 5.9 release)June 30, 2021
Go/no go DateOctober 12, 2021104 days after Alpha
Feature freeze/Bug FixesNovember 9, 202142 days after go/no go
Beta 1November 16, 20217 days after Feature Freeze
Release Candidate 1November 30, 202114 days after Beta 1
General releaseDecember 14, 202114 days after RC1
WP5.9 Schedule

This schedule puts Beta 1 the week of a major US holiday and a few major commerce dates worldwide. It does avoid putting RC1 during that week.

Proposed WordPress 5.9 Scope

The main goal for 2021 is getting full site editing to all WordPress users. For WP5.9 the following features are in the suggested roadmap:

  • Blocks + intrinsic web design
  • Navigation menus
  • Interface for theme.json
  • Refining editing flows for block themes
  • New default theme
  • Additional design tools

There are also a few roadmap hopefuls out there.

  • Pattern insertion + creation
  • Unzip/Rollback Failsafes
  • PHPUnit Tests
  • Improved compatibility with PHP 8.0 and 8.1

Proposed WordPress 5.9 Leads

  • Release Lead: Matt Mullenweg
  • Release Coordinators:
  • Triage Lead:
  • Editor Tech:
  • Editor Design:
  • Core Tech:
  • Theme Lead:
  • Technical Writer: Jonathan Bossenger
  • Docs Lead:
  • Marketing & Comms: Josepha Haden
  • Accessibility Lead:
  • Test Lead:

How to help!

I think we will need a slightly larger release squad for this final release of the year, so I’m opening calls for volunteers. As we approach the go/no go date and get a better idea of what features will really land in the release, we’ll get more squad leads assigned.

However, there are a couple of roles we really could use some volunteers for right now:

  1. Triage Lead
  2. Release Coordinators

If you’re interested in lending a hand, please share your interest in the comments!

Props to @francina for early versions of this post, and @jeffpaul + @desrosj for wrestling calendars with me.

#5-9, #planning