Agenda, Dev Chat, Wednesday June 26, 2024

The next WordPress Developers Chat will take place on  Wednesday June 26, 2024 at 20:00 UTC in the core channel on Make WordPress Slack.

The live meeting will focus on the discussion for upcoming releases, and have an open floor section.

Additional items will be referred to in the various curated agenda sections, as below. If you have ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. requests for help, please do continue to post details in the comments section at the end of this agenda.

Announcements

WordPress 6.6 RC1 was released on June 25. We are now in a hard string freeze. Note that the dev-feedback and dev-reviewed workflow is required prior to committing to the 6.6 branchbranch A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses branches to store the latest development code for each major release (3.9, 4.0, etc.). Branches are then updated with code for any minor releases of that branch. Sometimes, a major version of WordPress and its minor versions are collectively referred to as a "branch", such as "the 4.0 branch". (handbook reference).

WordPress 6.5.5, a security release, was shipped on June 24.

Gutenberg 18.6.1 was released on June 25.

Forthcoming releases

Next major releasemajor release A release, identified by the first two numbers (3.6), which is the focus of a full release cycle and feature development. WordPress uses decimaling count for major release versions, so 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, and 3.1 are sequential and comparable in scope.: 6.6

We are currently in the WordPress 6.6 release cycle. The WordPress 6.6 RC2 is scheduled for next Tuesday, July 2.

Next maintenance release

No maintenance releases are currently being planned. We will have take time to discuss any important follow-up tickets that were opened following the 6.5.5 release.

Next GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ release: 18.7

Gutenberg 18.7 is scheduled for July 3 and will include these issues. This version will NOT be included in the WordPress 6.6 release.

Discussions

As we’re in the middle of the 6.6 release cycle, we’ll prioritize any items for this release. Please review the Editor Updates section of this agenda for a list of updates on several key features related to this release.

Highlighted Posts

• WordPress 6.6 Field Guide
• Recap Hallway Hangout: Theme Building with Playground, Create-block-theme plugin, and GitHub
• Miscellaneous developer changes in WordPress 6.6
• Updates to the HTML API in 6.6
• Introducing the Token Map
• Proposal: Block Variation Aliases
• Miscellaneous Editor changes in WordPress 6.6
• Internationalization improvements in 6.6
• Section Styles
• WordPress 6.6 CSS Specificity
• Data Liberation and WordPress Migrations

Editor updates

You can keep up to date with the major Editor features that are currently in progress for 6.6 by viewing these Iteration issues.

Props to @annezazu for putting together these updates.

Outside of 6.6:

• Design tools: early design exploration around contextual color controls and new panels for Background, and Elements. This is part of a continual look at how our tools work together, especially as they grow.
• Phase 3: Data Views: experimental work continues with WIP PR for bringing data views to Posts list after some initial work to bootstrap the dashboard layout. (62409) and add a new experimental empty page for Posts (62406) in the last GB release.
• Patterns: PR underway to consider limiting pattern shuffling to theme and user patterns only.
• Styles: a larger discussion is underway to step back, review the main issues, and simplify the mental model around Global Styles and Theme.json: Next Steps.
• Themes: a new issue was created to allow themes to side-load single block plugins, which could help seamlessly open up more creativity and options baked into blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. themes.
• Unify publish flow: building off of the work in 6.6, there’s a new issue underway to complete some technical refinements for this work.
• Zoom out: a draft PR is underway to try click to disengage from zoom out view, an open question to solve with zoomed out view (how to disengage).

Tickets for assistance

Tickets for 6.6 will be prioritized.

Please include details of tickets / PRs and the links in the comments, and if you intend to be available during the meeting if there are any questions or you will be async.

Open floor

Items for this can be shared in the comments.

Props to @annezazu for reviewing.

#agenda, #core, #dev-chat