Hi there,
The wonderful designer, Eleonora Anzini, gifted the Gutenberg Times with a Wapuu, the unofficial mascot of WordPress. Anzini has been a strong supporter for WordCamp Europe 2024 as well as the upcoming Core Days 2024 in Rome, Italy. You can find out more about Anzini at her website. Isn’t the Wapuu cute with its headphones? Big Thank you to Eleonora Anzini.
What do you think? If you like it and email me your mailing address, I’ll find a way to get you a Gutenberg Times Podcast Wapuu sticker.
Have a great weekend!
Yours, 💕
Birgit
Developing Gutenberg and WordPress
Within a few days of the WordPress 6.6, the team of core contributors, started working on 6.6.1 release to fix fast some bugs around CSS specificity. The release post for the RC1 has all the info. The release is led by Tonya Mork and Ella van Durpe. WordPress 6.6.1 RC1 is now available. It fixes a few CSS specificity bugs, that plagued Divi Sites, and other Theme builders.
You can check out WordPress 6.6 without downloaded the version via the WordPress 6.6 release landing page.
WordPress 6.6 was actually the 50th major WordPress release. Matt Mullenweg wrote on his blog: “50 releases… wow. No matter what happens in the world, we’re just going to keep cranking. Three times a year. Relentlessly. A little better each time. Don’t believe me, just watch.”
Gutenberg 18.8
211 PRs merged, 57 Enhancements, 77 Bug Fixes, 35 of them were backported to Core, and made it into WordPress 6.6 and included in the RC 3. 60 contributors worked on this release, 10 of them were first time contributors. Congratulations to all!
Release lead, Andrew Serong, highlighted in his release post What’s new in Gutenberg 18.8 (17 July):
- Group block shadow support
- Background image support for blocks in global styles
- Toolbar justification controls for Group and Content blocks
- Color support for individual list item blocks
- Block inserter no longer behaves like a dialog box
Carolina Nymark and I chatted quite a bit about other updates in the Gutenberg 18.8 version. Also, what we find exciting about WordPress 6.6 and what’s in the works for WordPress 6.7 in November. The episode will arrive at your favorite podcast app over the weekend.
🎙️ The latest episode is Gutenberg Changelog #125 – WordPress 6.9, Gutenberg 22.1 and Gutenberg 22.2 with JC Palmes, WebDev Studios
In his 60th Design Share #60 (Jul 1 – Jul 12), Joen Asmussen, summarized about the work of the WordPress Design team.
It mostly was around the Data Views to adjust display to changing and expanding needs.
- Improving Filter UX
- Consolidate bulk actions
- Drag to resize for display panels
With many layers of design being modified in themes, global styles, block styles and plugins, there is a need to make sure users can identify where versions styling comes from. The work on visualizing style inheritance is ongoing.
The design team also work on handling the increasing complexities around the Placeholder component used in blocks and block variations. Speaking of core blocks: a collaboration to advance the Audio block has been sketched out, to give content creator more design options for the various parts. It’s ready for a developer to implement the designs. Lastly, the design team also work on the WordPress logo page in context of the redesign of wordpress.org.
What others write and say about WordPress 6.6
Pascal Claro at WP Roads covers the WordPress 6.6 release in his video: WordPress 6.6 New Features and offers great demos of Grid layouts, synch patterns, DataViews and the 10 other features. If you are a visual learner, you’d appreciate the detailed and fast-paced screen shares . They give you a meaninful insights in the how and why you would use any of the features. I am a fan of the little grid layout section creating a bento-box layout.
In this video, WordPress 6.6 negative margins, Elliot Richmond shows you how to create stunning, responsive layouts using the Group Block, Columns, and Cover Block to add depth and visual interest in adjusting margins. “The designer in you will love this subtle but powerful addition to WordPress 6.6”
Courtney Robertson, training team member and sponsored contributor by GoDaddy published What’s new in WordPress 6.6: Key features and updates. Robertson divided up the information into sections for End users, Theme developer, plugin developers and Site admins and enterprise users. So you as a reader can drill down directly to the passage most relevant to you.
Keith Devon and Mark Wilkinson talk through the WordPress 6.6 release in their podcast episode 95.
My friend, Varun Dubey, Contributor to Buddy Press, gives you a detailed look at What’s Coming in WordPress 6.6: A Detailed Look. “Whether you are a developer, site administrator, or regular user, these updates will make managing and customizing your WordPress site more accessible and efficient.” he wrote.
In his video, Matt Medeiros asked WordPress 6.6 is here! Now what?! and takes a deep dive into Synced pattern overrides and Grid layouts. I learned that WordPress 6.6 is also the first WordPress release with credits for three dudes named Matt.
If you rather read and quick updates, Camille Cunningham at Yoast published WordPress 6.6: The 6 highlights in this release! and gives you a nice overview of those highlights.
Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks
Fränk Klein ruminated in his latest blog post the question: Do block themes still need style.css? While the existence of the style.css is still needed with the metadata of a theme for WordPress, it can be empty for block themes. As Klein wrote: “style.css, on the other hand, represents the best practices of the days past. Let’s look at these and why they are no longer adequate” Details in his post.
Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.
Alex Lende published JSON Schema in WordPress – a tutorial on what JSON is how you can set up your development environment to take advantage of the standard and how you use the various JSON properties in modern WordPress development.
Save the date for July 23 at 15:00 UTC Developer Hours: Do you really need a custom block? Let’s explore alternatives. Explore with JuanMa Garrido and Nick Diego, alternatives to building custom block, and still be able to extend core blocks and curate the editing experience for your content creators.
Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s master branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.
Now also available via WordPress Playground. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? Email me with your experience
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
1 Comment
Yes, please, I’m in love with stickers, too and Your new Wapuu is so cute.
Great work by Eleonora.