The WordPress core development team builds WordPress! Follow this site for general updates, status reports, and the occasional code debate. There’s lots of ways to contribute:
With 5.9 well underway, we’re ready to schedule the 5.9 bug scrub sessions. These 5.9 specific ticket scrubs will happen each week until the final release.
An additional scrub will be added if there are reported RC 2 issues.
Check this schedule often, as it will change to reflect the latest information.
What about recurring component scrubs and triage sessions?
The above 5.9 scheduled bug scrubs are separate and in addition.
For your reference, here are some of the recurring sessions:
Twenty Twenty-Two Triage: Every Monday 15:00 UTC in the #core-themes channel.
Gutenberg Design Triage: Every Tuesday 16:00 UTC in the #design channel.
Accessibility Scrub: Every Friday 15:00 UTC in the #accessibility channel.
Testing Scrub: Every Friday 13:15 UTC in the #core-test channel.
CSS Scrub: First Thursday of every month 20:00 UTC in the #core-css channel.
Upgrade/Install Component: Every Tuesday at 17:00 UTC in the #core-auto-update channel.
Help/About Component: Every Monday, 19:00 UTC in the #core channel.
Want to lead a bug scrub?
Did you know that anyone can lead a bug scrub at anytime? Yes, you can!
How? Ping@audrasjb or @chaion07 on slack and let us know the day and time you’re considering as well as the report or tickets you want to scrub.
Planning one that’s 5.9-focused? Awesome! We’ll add it to the schedule here. You’ll get well deserved props in the weekly Dev Chat, as well as in the #props Slack channel!
Where can you find tickets to scrub?
Report 5 provides a list of all open 5.9 tickets:
Use this list to focus on highest priority tickets first.
Use this list to focus on tickets that haven’t received love in a while.
Report 6 provides a list of open 5.9 tickets ordered by workflow.
Need a refresher on bug scrubs? Checkout Leading Bug Scrubs in the core handbook.
Questions?
Have a question, concern, or suggestion? Want to lead a bug scrub? Please leave a comment or reach out directly to @audrasjb or @chaion07 on slack.
@dryanpress is working on reducing the huge number of custom properties in customize-control.css, a process which has revealed hex values shared by multiple properties. These could effectively be replaced by additional theme properties
@wazeter noted that sometimes in larger files it’s better to avoid find-and-replacing colour values and instead to go through logical property groupings e.g. box-shadows, then background etc.
@wazeter shared a link to every-layout.dev which outlines an approach to CSS architecture which could be relevant to this project, and which demonstrates the need for a good set of default custom properties
Please note that 5.8.2 was deferred due to the lack of ready-to-ship tickets. WP 5.8.2 RC is scheduled on Tuesday November 2, 2021. With a final release on Wednesday, November 10, 2021.
Reminder: @desrosj and @circlecube are co-leading the 5.8.x releases. 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.
From @desrosj: If there is anything you’d like to see released prior to 5.9, please make sure to flag it and help bring the ticket to a resolution!
A readme file for end-to-end (e2e) tests was added to WordPress core. It provides instructions of how to run the tests locally and links to documentation. This should hopefully result in more contributors writing e2e tests. See ticket #53550 for more details.
Work has continued on various coding standards fixes in core. See tickets #54177, #54277, #54278, #54284 for more details. Thanks to @sabbirshouvo, a new contributor, for improving escaping in various parts of core!
Scrubs continue weekly, hosted by @marybaum and @webcommsat. Three tickets will wind up contributing to big changes long-term; a couple of tickets are minor markup changes, so they should be good to go this week.
@audrasjb asked for an update concerning the new Performance team proposal. @chanthaboune: “There are a few questions that I’m synthesizing into a comment. Performance is, of course, an important thing for the WordPress project as a whole. There were some questions on implementation, though.”
@janthiel asked for a review of #53450. @audrasjb moved it for 5.9 consideration. This ticket will need dev-feedback and a technical review.
@costdev is working on the changes from assertEquals() to assertSame() in the test suite for 5.9 and the “Stage 1” pull request is ready for review: #53364.
@tobifjellner asked for a review of #54300. @audrasjb moved it for 5.9 consideration and added a patch proposal.
This week, a major portion of the work to update the Gutenberg Examples repository was completed. The repository block examples, while accurate, were out of date and didn’t reflect the most current approach to block registration.
These examples can be used in many ways. You can read through them to learn how to create blocks, check out the repository and modify them to see how they work, or use them as a starting point for your own blocks.
All example blocks now use block metadata files and leverage the most recent version of the Block API. Updates were also made to the developer experience to introduce ESlint and Prettier configurations that can be used by IDEs, and to leverage the most recent version of the @wordpress/scripts package.
Share your examples
While the existing examples cover a lot of topics and use cases, it would be great to expand the list and help more folks do more with blocks. In particular, examples covering more advanced block related topics or topics that are not strictly related to creating blocks but still part of the Gutenberg developer toolkit, such as SlotFill, are very much needed.
If you’re looking for a way to contribute and grow community knowledge, please consider opening an issue or pull request with your example suggestion.
Have you been working on 5.9 related issues? Let everyone know!
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.
A myriad of design tools: layout control, block gap, typography options, border support, spacing, dimension controls, enhanced cropping tools, and duotone filters available in many blocks.
Navigation Block.
Improved block interactions, such as List View drag and drop, enhanced toolbar controls when using nested blocks, enhanced inserter between blocks, and block-level locking for patterns and inner blocks.
General UI improvements, like rich URL previews, the improved settings modal, and refined icons and animations.
Insertion of patterns directly from the Pattern Directory.
Iterative performance improvements.
To note, not all of the above are currently ready, but there is some level of confidence that they can be by the time of 5.9.
Who Attended
Matt Mullenweg – Project Lead (advocating for the vision/mission of WordPress and aggregate body of users)
Matías Ventura – Gutenberg project lead (host of the demo)
Kelly Hoffman – Lead Designer (advocating for Design and following up on design action items)
Helen Hou-Sandí – Lead developer (advocating for Core, and extender community)
Josepha Haden Chomphosy – Executive Director (advocating for the community of WordPress and aggregate body of users)
Chloé Bringmann – Assisting with administrative and operational logistics
Héctor Prieto – Technical Project Manager (following up on technical action items)
While most of the efforts will focus on polishing existing features, the items below represent key high-level items to focus on in the weeks to come. Watch out for the recently created WordPress 5.9 Editor Must-Haves board for a more comprehensive and up-to-date list of items. Also, here’s an overview of different ways to keep up with Gutenberg, and don’t hesitate to join us at the core editor meeting every Wednesday at 14:00 UTC in #core-editor!
Block Themes and Site Editor
Block Themes and their template editors will be introduced in WordPress 5.9. It’s important to ease users into this new feature as it grows. To that end, the next steps will be to formalize editing flows for block themes, and to refine the Template Part Focus Mode.
Styling
WordPress 5.8 saw the introduction of theme.json, and WordPress 5.9 aims to go one step beyond by adding a Styles graphic interface for users to personalize the style on their sites. Apart from polishing the Styles sidebar, work will continue to enhance a wide array of design tools and enable them in blocks that benefit from them. These tools include typography tools, dimension and spacing tools, and UI updates like an improved ColorPicker.
Patterns
Patterns provide a huge help to customize your site by adding rich block compositions and editing their content, and they will play a big role in block theme editing. Thanks to patterns, users are no longer constrained to a theme’s layout as they can design their site’s layout with the help of template part blocks and already available patterns. WordPress 5.9 will offer users patterns directly from the Pattern Directory, so the design choices patterns empower will grow exponentially as the directory gets populated without switching themes or upgrading WordPress! Check out the Pattern Insertion Tracking Issue for enhancements on pattern insertion flows.
Thank you to @cbringmann, @chanthaboune, and @matveb for their work on getting this content processed and ready to ship. Props to @angelasjin, @desrosj, @jeffikus, and @kjellr for reviewing this post.
The meeting was convened to discuss some of the challenges contributors have been facing. Those challenges can probably be best dissected into two parts:
What important changes to the Navigation Block need to be made for full site editing?
What is the best path forwards for the Navigation Editor given the proposed changes to the block?
Meeting recording
Here’s a recording for the full meeting. The recording starts halfway through the introductions and didn’t capture the intros for myself (@talldanwp), Tammie (@karmatosed), Joen (@joen) or Emmanuel (@manooweb).
Topics
The meeting was quite a deep dive into the Navigation Block and Editor, exploring concepts like:
How the Navigation Editor and Block development has diverged
Upcoming priorities for the Navigation Block and Editor
Upcoming improvements to the Navigation Block. Largely centered around the block saving data like a Template Part or Reusable block does (described in the Gutenberg issue #34612)
There has already been some work on using a Template Part post type for this (pull request #35418)
Some exploration should happen around alternatives – a new post type or using the menu term’s description field
The actual data structure that is saved needs consideration and exploration
Migrating menu data when a user switches theme (e.g. to a block-based theme or between block-based themes)
Backwards compatibility with the current menu system
The shortcomings of the current menu / menu item data structure, the overhead and performance of this system
The current menu and menu item being the best way to achieve full backwards compatibility in the Navigation Editor
Migration paths for extensibility
The navigation block supporting different designs and styles
Some analysis of products and plugins that handle menus
Outcomes
The main outcome was to focus in the short-term on the Navigation Block for WordPress 5.9. (as an addendum to what was discussed in the meeting, this can be tracked via the Twenty Twenty-Two tracking issue (#75), and in the Navigation Block tracking issue (#35521)).
As the Navigation Block develops it will be possible to explore ways that it might work better within the Navigation Editor.
Immediate tasks
Publish a clearer set of goals for the Navigation Editor and Block.
The Navigation Block underwent a series of changes intended to provide a more intuitive navigation management experience. New links are now added instantly after clicking the “+” icon without an additional block selection step. There is also an additional new way of adding links: using a slash inserter. It is worth noting that a slash inserter can be enabled for any block using a new, experimental flag called __experimentalSlashInserter. In addition, navigation links may now be transformed into other allowed block types, such as Site Logo, Home Link, or Social Icons. Finally, it’s easier for users to notice linking mistakes thanks to the squiggly line highlighting empty links similarly to grammar errors.
The site editing experience got polished in this recent release. The template part editor gained a convenient back button to ease returning to the site editor. Switching between editing different template parts was made more accessible by listing the available areas in template details. Also, the custom gradient picker was refreshed.
Fix not archiving failure artifacts for flaky tests. (35379)
Plugins
Add oandregal and tellthemachines to codeowners file. (35233)
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
Time To Render The First Block
KeyPress Event (typing)
Gutenberg 11.7
3.7 s
24.68 ms
Gutenberg 11.6
3.5 s
25.88 ms
WordPress 5.8
4.0 s
34.06 ms
Kudos to all the contributors that helped with the release. 👏
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