Howdy,
Justin Tadlock wrote: “WordPress 6.5 is just a month and a half away, and that means all cylinders are firing. ” Beta 1 will arrive on February 13, 2024, and that comes with a feature freeze.
Gutenberg 17.7 is available as Release candidate 1, which is the last plugin release to make it into WordPress 6.5 release. Go out and test!
You don’t need a test site on a server or locally anymore. You can test right in our browser via WordPress Playground (link w/ Gutenberg Nightly installed)
Happy testing, until next week 🙂
Yours, 💕
Birgit
If you will be at WordCamp Asia and would like to meetup, you can use my public calendar to see how we can connect. (Don’t worry about the 30-min slot,we can keep going if it pleases us.)
My friend and college Ryan Welcher will also be in Taipei, Taiwan. If you want to meet with him, you can use his Calendly link to schedule a meeting.
Developing Gutenberg and WordPress
Anne McCarthy published a great video again, and shows us the Power in Every Detail and gives a Quick Look at Smaller Features in WordPress 6.5.
“This video goes through smaller yet impactful features and improvements coming in WordPress 6.5, set to be released on March 26th, 2024. This is truly just a glimpse! Drag & drop improvements could have an entire video dedicated to it alone.” she wrote.
McCarthy covered a lot in five minutes!
- See outline of blocks that are editable to help visualize what you can interact with.
- Show a preview of your template or turn it off.
- Right click on List View to show block options.
- Use the block toolbar while in distraction-free mode.
- Explore a new preferences section, complete with Appearance and Accessibility sections.
- Drag & drop an image next to another, and it automatically transforms into a gallery.
- Set a gallery to randomly change the order of the images shown on each page load.
- Rename almost all blocks in List View for better organization.
- Enjoy faster editing experience across the board.
- See a summary of style changes when you save in the Site Editor.
- View your site quickly after saving, thanks to an updated snacker notice.
If you are more like me that you rather read about changes and updates, Anne McCarthy posted Core Editor Improvement: Power in the Details on the make blog with a lot more details and instructions on how to use them.
🎙️ Latest episode: Gutenberg Changelog #98 – WordPress 6.5, Gutenberg 18.0 Community Theme Project and the Contributor Mentorship Program with special guest Maggie Cabrera
For his post, What’s new for developers? (February 2024), Justin Tadlock collected a ton of information. He highlighted the Block Bindings API, the new allowedBlocks property for block.json and its implication for extenders, and features update for the WordPress playground. In addition, you’ll find 20+ other knowledge nuggets for plugins and tools developers, as well as for theme builders in this post.
Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners
Daniel Robert shared what the Woo team has been working on via Store Editing Snaps: Enhancing Product Display and Streamlining Store Management. “It highlights the Product Collection Block for improved product presentation and updates to templating logic for handling WooCommerce templates, aiming to streamline store setup and fix long-standing bugs. Efforts also include improving user experience in the editor and ensuring robust test coverage for theme and block template customization”
Bud Kraus went on Exploring Twenty Twenty-Four: A WordPress Theme for Any Website and shared what he wants you to know. “Twenty Twenty-Four lets you make a wide variety of websites, limited only by your imagination. However, its strength is in creating three types of sites, which I will explore in detail later on. ” he wrote. Kraus then continues to give a mini tutorial on how to work with pattern and the image aspect ratios feature in templates. If you haven’t checked out the latest WordPress default theme, you learn quite a great deal about it.
In his video on WordPress Layouts, Jamie Marsland, PootlePress, explains the four width your content can take: Default, wide, full, and custom width. You’ll learn how to determine globally your layout for text and media, how to establish a custom width for certain sections, and how all those are interconnected.
Before block themes and the site editor, users didn’t have much control over these various layout width on their site, unless the theme developer purposefully allows those settings on their theme. With the block themes there come more power to the users, and with that, to quote Mr. Parker, comes great responsibility.
Tammie Lister‘s Editor Tips site has new posts:
- Show button text labels
You can show button text labels by turning them on in preferences. This can then also be turned off using the same method. - Manage block visibility
Control what blocks are visible by going to ‘preferences’ and selecting ‘Blocks‘. Here you can choose to show most used blocks and even turn on or off a particular block. - Document outline
Want to see an outline of your document? You can by clicking the ‘Document overview‘ and selecting ‘Outline’ - View site from editor
If you are in the editor browser, you can view your site by going to the ‘search’ icon and hovering. The ‘view site‘ icon will reveal, and you can then click to see your site. - Editor breadcrumbs
Quickly navigate through your block content using the editor navigation at the bottom of the screen. Just go to the bottom, and you can click up the stack of blocks to find where you have been
You can also follow @wpeditortips on X (former Twitter)
Rich Tabor amplified Matias Ventura’s idea for WordPress contributors to build single block plugins for the repository outside the core blocks. Learn more by heading over to the post Let’s build more blocks. What are blocks, that you would need in addition to the core blocks? Chime in on GitHub.
Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks
In his article “Adding and using grid support in WordPress themes” Justin Tadlock wrote about how Theme developers can add a feature called grid support to their themes. This grid support helps them arrange the website’s layout in more creative ways, giving them more flexibility in design. The article provides step-by-step instructions and examples to help theme makers understand how to include this feature in their work.
On February 8th, 2024 contributors came together in a Hallway Hangout in Intrinsic Design. The discussion was focused on understanding intrinsic design principles and some challenges of implementing them in WordPress themes and plugins. I posted a recap with the video recording and shared links.
Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.
In his post, Improving block development documentation: 2023 recap and a look ahead, Nick Diego summarized what changes came to the Block Editor Handbook in the last 12 months or so and what’s in store as next steps. He also acknowledges that with 400 pages in the handbook, it needs some commitment from contributors to keep up to date, especially on a project that is in active development for so long and keeps adding new APIs, and its documentation.
In her post Introducing New WooCommerce Developer Documentation, Jacklyn Biggin shared about the launch of the new site. ”This resource is designed to assist developers in building powerful ecommerce stores, crafting unique extensions or themes, and contributing directly to enhancing WooCommerce itself. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting your journey with WooCommerce, you’ll find essential guides and resources tailored to meet your needs.” she wrote.
Interactivity API
The Buzz about the Interactivity API coming to WordPress 6.5 is heating on X (former Twitter) and we collected a few resources, so you can get started exploring the possibilities. Start with the two videos linked below.
Buzz on X (formerly known as Twitter)
Core contributor Felix Arntz posted: “I need to interrupt my baby bonding leave to just say: This is the most exciting new API to land in WordPress core since the REST API and Block API! If you’re a WordPress developer of any kind, I encourage you to start using the Interactivity API sooner than later.”
Riad Benguella posted: “The interactivity API is coming to WordPress on 6.5. With block bindings, improved block hooks, the data views package, WordPress 6.5 is going to be huge for WordPress developers.”
Deryck Oñate tweeted: ‘WordPress 6.5 will have Interactivity API in the core. Something new and exciting to learn and take advantage of. Thanks to @luisherranz and all the contributors, and linked to Interactivity API: Server Directive Processing
Seth Rubinstein, Pew Research, posted: ” I see that the WordPress/interactivity api is getting merged into the WP 6.5 release. Congrats to Luis Heranze and Pablo Postigo and all those involved in this amazing new addition to the modern WordPress developer’s toolbox. (…)
If you’re looking for code examples of how to use the API in a systemic way, we just put in place a release strategy for our plugins, so you can now see our in-development work leading up to the April 18th launch of PRC Platform.
These repos are now getting updated with each push to our in-development release branch, no more waiting months for updates. Of particular note for people to peruse:
Documentation and Demos
- Getting Started Guide
- API Reference
- Movies demo (code)
- Block Development Examples on GitHub
- Interactive Game of Dodge by Jonathan Bossenger
Upcoming Events
March 19, 2024:
WP Engine’s Decode 2024 online conference
Developer Hours
February 13, 2024, at 16:00 UTC
JavaScript for modern WordPress development
February 27, 2024, at 16:00 UTC
How to build modern web layouts with WordPress blocks
Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s master branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.
Now available via WordPress Playground (no need for a test site)
Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.
Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? Don’t hesitate to send them via email or send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph.
For questions to be answered on the Gutenberg Changelog, send them to changelog@gutenbergtimes.com
