It's been a pretty quiet week. The PHP team has completed its draft of the document with steps that should be done before a PHP update.
Continue reading "WordPress weekly recap #47: Misc"Blog
Convert WordPress plugin readme to Markdown
The readme.txt of a WordPress plugin needs to be formatted in a specific way, as shown in the example readme. Parts of that are already Markdown formatting, but, for example, the headlines are formatted differently. In this post, I show you a tool which converts the WordPress readme format into valid Markdown.
WordPress weekly recap #46: WordPress 4.9 and more
This week, WordPress 4.9 was released. Among other things, the new version comes with customizer and code editing improvements.
Continue reading "WordPress weekly recap #46: WordPress 4.9 and more"WordPress weekly recap #45: 4.9 field guide and more
This week, the WordPress 4.9 field guide was published, which summarizes the larger new features and improvements of 4.9 and links to the dev notes.
Continue reading "WordPress weekly recap #45: 4.9 field guide and more"Remove elements from tab order
Elements like links, buttons, and form fields, can be reached via the keyboard (by default by using the tab key). This post shows you how to remove specific elements from this tab order, so they can no longer be accessed via the keyboard.
Continue reading "Remove elements from tab order"WordPress weekly recap #44: WordPress 4.8.3 and more
This week, WordPress 4.8.3 was released. The new version fixes a security issue, so updating is strongly encouraged.
Continue reading "WordPress weekly recap #44: WordPress 4.8.3 and more"Use dynamic subsetting in Typekit
Typekit provides a large library of fonts for easy use in web and offline sync. If using a font as a web font, the font size should – obviously – be as small as possible, and Typekit is providing the Dynamic Subsetting feature since 2015, which is a useful tool for keeping the size small.
Continue reading "Use dynamic subsetting in Typekit"WordPress weekly recap #43: 4.9 dev notes and more
This week, several dev notes for new features in WordPress 4.9 were published.
Accessibility
Misc
- »This week in WordPress Accessibility, October 24, 2017«. Among other things, the team set its focus for 5.0: the accessibility of Gutenberg.
Core
Code editing improvements in 4.9
WordPress 4.9 comes with several improvements for the code editing. It brings CodeMirror for syntax highlighting, linting for CSS, JS, HTML, and JSON, and auto-completion for CSS, JS, and HTML. It is implemented into the HTML widget, the Custom CSS control, and the file editors.
Besides that, 4.9 comes with a method for detecting PHP errors, which are results of changes in the theme and plugin editor. This method tests the editor view and homepage after saving, and if there is a fatal error, it rolls back the changes. Much more on that in the post »Code Editing Improvements in WordPress 4.9« by Weston Ruter.
New Themes Experience in the customizer in 4.9
4.9 brings a new themes experience in the customizer, which allows browsing, previewing, and installing themes from the WordPress.org repo directly in the customizer. It is extendable, so third-party theme directories can integrate there own theme via plugins.
More about that in the post »A New Themes Experience in the Customizer« by Nick Halsey.
Widget improvements in 4.9
WordPress 4.9 allows shortcodes, media, and embeds in the text widget. The video widget now supports all oEmbed provider for video.
Besides that, the sidebar mapping at switching a theme was improved, and there is an indication if a widget change was saved, and a warning if the user wants to leave the widget screen with unsaved changes. More about that in Weston’s post »Widget Improvements in WordPress 4.9«.
Misc
- »Changes to the screen-reader-text CSS class in WordPress 4.9«.
- »What’s new in Gutenberg? (24th October)«. Among other things: metabox support.
- »Improvements in REST API request parameter regular expressions«.
- »WordPress 4.9 Beta 4«.
- »Dev Chat Summary: October 25th (4.9 week 13)«.
Plugins
One at a time
Since last week, a developer can only have one plugin in the review queue at a time. This is not meant to hold the queue low, but because there are many people not getting back to the plugin team and not finishing reviews. Some of them miss or lose the email, some do not know what to do with that, and some just want a plugin review and not use the directory.
This restriction was made to prevent the latter. More on that in the post »One At A Time« by Mika Epstein.
Create autoloader with Composer
I started a small WordPress plugin and tried to orientate myself a little bit towards the Speaking Plugin of Alain Schlesser for the structure and basic principles. So I came about the topic autoloading. Alain wrote a custom autoloader for the plugin but mentioned the possibility via composer in his talk at the WordCamp Nijmegen. This post describes how to create an autoloader with Composer.
Continue reading "Create autoloader with Composer"WordPress weekly recap #42: research before selling your plugin and more
The third beta version of WordPress 4.9 was published this week, and Mika Epstein published a post about things to keep in mind as a plugin dev before selling your plugin.
Continue reading "WordPress weekly recap #42: research before selling your plugin and more"