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The WordPress 5.8.x release schedule calls for a release candidate this week and a minor release next week. However, the scheduling for these 5.8.x releases will be changed.
The 5.8.2 release dates as previously planned will be skipped and rescheduled to the “if necessary” 5.8.3 schedule as follows:
5.8.2 (updated)
RC: Tuesday November 2, 2021
Final release: Wednesday, November 10, 2021
This deferral was determined because currently there are no commit candidates. Plus, many commits still need a lot of work to merge, or are potentially too impactful and therefore belong in a major release instead.
Release Coordination
Because the 5.8.x releases are part of 5.8 by extension, all coordination and conversation related to the 5.8.x releases are held in the #5-8-release-leadsSlack channel.
Do you want to see some tickets included in the next release? Check the 5.8.2 milestone: provide feedback on tickets, test existing fixes, or even submit a patch to help move things along!
Gutenberg 11.6 has been released! This release includes a number of nice enhancements and as usual many bug fixes.
Site Logo cropping and rotating within the editor
Before Gutenberg 11.6, the image used as the site logo had to be edited before being uploaded to your site. With the goal of providing a wide array of tools to adapt your logo without leaving the editor, it is now possible to crop, zoom, and rotate the image you choose for the site logo directly in the Site Logo block’s toolbar!
Locking control at block level
Alongside template level locking, now you can lock individual blocks to prevent moving or removing them; you can do this by adding a lock attribute on the block settings. Block-level lock takes priority over the templateLock feature and currently, you can lock moving and removing blocks.
The toolbar of locked blocks will have the movers hidden, and the Remove block option won’t be available either.
Query Pagination uses Flex Layout
Following previous releases bringing Flex Layouts to blocks, Gutenberg 11.6 improves the Query Pagination block to support the flex layout along with a justification option, for automatic best-fit.
Other Notable Highlights
Regarding Full Site Editing and Global Styles, basic support for child themes has been added. This means the Beta Site Editor is available when the child theme of a block theme is active, and its templates, template parts, and theme.json are inherited.
The writing flow has also received some enhancements in this release: the Richtext format toolbar now shows a visual clue for hidden active items and, when using the quick inserter and clicking the Browse all button, your current filter value is now passed to the main inserter without the need to type it again, making this switch between inserters seamless.
Template Part Focus Mode refers to the view that lets you focus and work on a single template part, like a header, and is available for any template part. This isolated template part editing is now accessible from the ellipsis menu in the Template Part toolbar. More Template Part Focus Mode improvements are coming soon, so make sure to check its tracking issue here.
11.6
Enhancements
Block Library
Post Title block: Add typography formatting options. (31623)
Storybook: Remove G2 prefix from the Components section. (34734)
Block Editor: Update react-spring to 9.2.4. (30979)
Move react-native-url-polyfill to dev dependencies. (34687)
Use Jest related rules only when the package is installed. (33120)
Ensure that all *.asset.php files are included in plugin.zip. (34875)
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 10.6
7.6 s
38.38 ms
Gutenberg 10.5
7.2 s
38.54 ms
WordPress 5.8
7.9 s
45.97 ms
Kudos to all the contributors that helped with the release. 👏
19 tickets closed during the 5.8 cycle, and some of the remaining bugs are already in the 5.9 milestone.
So what else should happen soon? To help set priorities for upcoming releases, please check out the groups of open tickets below. Hopefully you’ll find a ticket that interests you.
Content and arrangement
The first two tickets here suggest a long-term direction for the toolbar content and the order of links.
One major proposal is replacing the hover interaction for expanding dropdown menus so that would require intentional clicking (or touchscreen tap, Space or Enter key) with JavaScript enabled. A change this big needs plenty of testing early in a release cycle, and the code is not ready for that yet.
Ultimately, a good implementation of this could keep users from accidentally opening the profile dropdown when they navigate near the Publish button. And it could fix up to three reported bugs:
The “go, no go” review date for WordPress 5.9 is coming up on October 12, 2021.
Gutenberg 11.6.0 was the final full release of the GutenbergPlugin prior to that date (although we’ll have an RC for 11.7.0 on the 6th October which can be used for the “go/no go”).
The main goal for 5.9 is getting full site editing to all WordPress users.
We’ve landed the drill down Navigation in the sidebar and we are iterating on the different panels and components. (you can follow the updates on the issue)
Also related to this, @mciampini provided an update from the folks working on the components package:
Shipping:
After merging the new Navigator components for the Global Styles sidebar, we’ve made a number of refinements.
We’ve renamed them to NavigatorProvider and added tests. Remaining work on these components is being tracked in this issue. These components provide support for hierarchical navigation without including their own opinionated styles, making them suitable for a range of use cases in the editor.
This will help us to validate the API of the component and reduce overlap with the existing Navigation components that specifically render the “W” sidebar in the full site editor.
Continuing with light navigation related things such as URL dialog improvements for the basic mode of the menu, and mockups for transforms to switch to advanced building.
I’ve PR that should fix editor crash when dragging multiple blocks into innerBlocks. I’m not very familiar with this part of the code, and I would appreciate extra eyes on it.
Also started working on useSelect call optimizations because of missing dependencies across the codebase.
I’m planning to drop it into the new contributors meeting to enlist some help. I’ve also started a Twitch stream doing general Gutenberg development topics.
@johnstonphilip queries whether locking is enough to ensure that the user understands the action they are taking is destructive across other pages.
@get_dave noted that the Update/Publish flow now separates out changes to the current Post vs Reusable Blocks (similar to how the Site Editor handles saving template parts).
@get_dave recommend raising an Issue to suggest having a more explicit warning inline on the Reusable Block to flag that you are making changes to a global entity.
Getting useInnerBlockProps and LinkControl out of “experimental” status
@fabiankaegy brought up two tickets related to features that are currently marked as __experimental which he thinks are at the point where they can be moved out of the experimental state.
The 5.8.x point releases are coordinated in the #5-8-release-leadsSlack channel. This channel is public and will be archived once 5.9 is released.
@costdev pointed out that a patch for ticket #53801 leads to a change in both Core and in the @wordpress/widgets package and asked for advices for how to ensure that any changes are committed at the same time to minimise issues on either end. @audrasjb answered that there is already an issue for this ticket in the 5.8.2 Gutenberg project board.
Next major release
Concerning the next major release —WordPress 5.9— a planning roundup was published a couple weeks ago.
Reminder: everyone is welcome to run a bug scrub on the #core Slack channel. If you are interested, please read this handbook post: Leading bug scrubs and get in touch with @audrasjb or @francina for details.
Also, @audrasjb silently scrubbed the Future Release queue and moved a dozen of tickets (in various components) to 5.9, with refreshed patches when needed. Most of them are ready and waiting for review/commit.
PHPUnit 9.5.10 and 8.5.21 were released with a breaking change: PHP deprecations are no longer converted to exceptions by default (convertDeprecationsToExceptions="true" can be configured to enable this). See changeset [51871] and ticket #54183 for more details.
This is also included in the Changes to the WordPress Core PHP Test Suitedev note, which is highly recommended to read as it includes other important changes for plugin and theme authors using the WordPress Core test framework as a basis for their integration tests.
@joyously asked if it is supposed to handle initial installation or deactivation and uninstall also? @audrasjb answered that it only handles initial installation, because a dependency could exists without the “base” plugin.
@joyously asked what value does this enhancement add to the existing implementation. @clorith answered that It surfaces which plugins would enhance (or enable) functionality, so yes it has value. @audrasjb added that it standardizes a process which currently has many different implementations.
@afragen encouraged testers to install the PR, add a test plugin with a couple of dot org plugin slugs in a comma separated list in the Required Pluginsheader. Removing or changing the header name will deactivate those dependencies from being displayed.
@sabernhardt shared a draft of a Toolbar component update post.
He also pointed out that a docs update (#54191) was just committed today.
Open Floor
From @marybaum and @annezazu: there is a new testing call in the Full Site Editing Outreach Program.
@costdev noted that the Administration component doesn’t have a maintainer currently listed. He asked for a review of #53152. @sergeybiryukov moved it to milestone 5.9.
@pbearne asked for a review of #54020. He’s available to make a simpler patch if needed.
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