Category: WordPress

WordPress weekly recap #43: 4.9 dev notes and more

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This week, several dev notes for new features in WordPress 4.9 were published.

Accessibility

Misc

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

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.