Tag Archives: Adds

Gutenberg 10.8 Adds New Typography Controls and Block Previews – WordPress Tavern

[ad_1] On Wednesday, Gutenberg 10.8 landed in the WordPress plugin directory. The release includes new typography options for controlling the Heading block’s font-weight and the List block’s font family. The Audio and File blocks now show preview content in the inserter. Gutenberg 10.7 felt like it introduced flashier features than 10.8. But, this was still a solid release. Sometimes the things that you do not see are just as important as those that you do. Full Site Editing (FSE) components continue to move along at a swift pace. Most changes were bug fixes rather than enhancements. One of the primary theme-related FSE upgrades allows developers to set the padding for nav menu links via theme.json. This may be a small win, but it is unlikely to address the numerous issues with styling navigation items and nested lists. The change also does not affect the Page List block links, which can be set as a nav menu item. The Navigation block will be one of the toughest nuts to crack before site editing is a possibility. Enhancements like this help, but it is a long and winding road to a solution that satisfies both theme authors and users. Users should see the post title in template-editing mode. The template details modal also includes more detailed information, such as how to best name custom templates. New Typography Options Gutenberg 10.8 enables the font-weight control for Heading blocks. This allows theme authors to define the default weight via their theme.json files, and users can override this via the sidebar panel in the editor. Testing font weights for the Heading block. The control displays all nine possible weights: Thin Extra Light Light Regular Medium Semi Bold Bold Extra Bold Black While each weight is selectable, it does not mean all fonts support a specific weight. For example, users will see no difference between Extra Bold and Black with the Twenty Twenty-One theme. In the long term, this should be coupled with the font family control. This would allow theme authors to define which weights are supported by a specific family, making those the only options for users. The List block is jumping ahead of others with its support of the font family option. Generally, we would see the Heading or Paragraph blocks gain such features first. Setting a custom font family for a List block. The Site Title, Site Tagline, and Post Title blocks all currently support the font family control. It is a welcome addition to see expanded typography options, but I look forward to the day they are offered across every block. Theme authors can also define custom letter spacing for the Site Title and Site Tagline blocks. However, the feature does not currently appear in the block options sidebar, which would allow users to customize it. There is an open ticket to address this missing piece of the UI. Audio and File Block Previews Audio block preview in the inserter. The development team added new previews for the Audio and File blocks in the inserter. This is a nice-to-have enhancement, adding long-missing previews of some of the remaining core blocks, but it is also a bug fix. In previous versions of the block editor, users who attempted to upload media via the Audio or File blocks would get a duplicate upload. This only happened in situations where their theme or a plugin registered a custom block style. Adding a preview apparently fixed this odd bug. This change also nearly gives us a complete set of previews for the pre-WordPress 5.8 blocks. Classic, Spacer, Shortcode, and Legacy Widget do not have them, but they are unique cases. The upcoming theme-related blocks also lack previews. “Archives” Label Now Shown for Archives Dropdown Duplicate archives heading and label. When using the Archives block as a dropdown, it now outputs a label titled “Archives.” While it is a seemingly trivial change, it could impact how themes typically present this block. This enhancement changes some existing expectations. The primary use case throughout WordPress’s history has been to show the Archives dropdown in a widget. In that case, there is almost always a widget title with the “Archives” text preceding it. I expect most other use cases would follow a similar pattern. This essentially creates duplicate text. Themes Team representative Carolina Nymark had an alternate suggestion: What if the label was visible by default, but there was an option for hiding it? Similar to the search block, except there would be an actual label hidden with a screen reader text CSS class when the option is toggled. That would have been my suggestion too if I had seen the ticket earlier. For now, theme authors who need to hide it should target the .wp-block-archives-dropdown > label class in their CSS. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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Chrome Canary Adds Flag for Disabling FLoC Testing – WordPress Tavern

[ad_1] Google’s controversial Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) experiment now has a feature flag within Chrome Canary (the nightly build of Chrome for developers) that allows users to opt out. In January 2020, Google announced its plans to discontinue support for third-party cookies in Chrome within two years. The first bits and pieces of the company’s Privacy Sandbox initiative started landing in Chrome in December 2020 with an initial flag to disable it. FLoC, Google’s proposed replacement for third-party cookies, began testing as a developer origin trial in Chrome at the end of March 2021. In Canary, users can navigate to chrome://flags/#privacy-sandbox-settings-2 to find the Privacy Sandbox Settings 2 flag. Relaunch Canary to save the changes. This will unlock the box that allows users to either reset their FLoC group or opt out of FLoC entirely. The new setting is available under chrome://settings/privacySandbox: If the setting remains enabled, which is the default, Chrome will group users into cohorts based on recent browsing activity and then advertisers select ads for the entire group. Browsing activity for the individual is “kept private on your device,” but Chrome certainly has access that information by way of mediating the cohorts. Google notes that the trial is currently only active in some regions. Users can also opt out of Privacy Sandbox trials on the same page. Current trials include the following: Advertisers and publishers can use FLoC Advertisers and publishers can study the effectiveness of ads in a way that does not track you across sites Google has not specified how users would opt out of FLoC if the experiment is successful and moves forward. Organizations and site owners who are currently on the fence about it may go either way depending on how easy it is for Chrome users to opt out themselves. “Instead of comparing FLoC to its predecessor, third party cookies, I feel it’s actually more like the Facebook Pixel – mostly in the sense that it’s controlled by a single surveillance capital company,” WordPress core contributor Roy Tanck commented on the trac ticket for the discussion. “FLoC may not be quite as nefarious, but I feel it should be something website owners consciously opt into. “WordPress has always advocated for a free and open web, and FLoC appears to actively harm that goal. I think WordPress should take a stand against this, and do it now.” A few others have chimed in on the ticket recently as other open source projects have started blocking FLoC by default. Plugin developer David McCan’s comment referenced analytics data published in early May suggesting that US users choose to opt out of tracking 96 percent of the time following the changes in iOS 14.5. “There is no doubt that coming down on the side of user privacy vs user tracking is the right thing to do,” McCan said. “Which headline would we rather see? ‘By default millions of WordPress websites are allowing users to be tracked’ or ‘WordPress takes steps to block user tracking making millions of websites around the world safe to visit?’ “We already have a policy that opt-in by default tracking’ is not allowed in plugins hosted by WordPress. This is because we recognize the responsibility and benefit of protecting user privacy.” During a live marketing event Google hosted at the end of last week, Jerry Dischler, vice president and general manager of Ads, addressed the recent privacy concerns surrounding FLoC. “We’ll be using these [Privacy Sandbox] APIs for our own ads and measurement products just like everyone else, and we will not build any backdoors for ourselves,” Dischler said. Dischler also reaffirmed Google’s commitment to moving away from third-party cookies. “Third-party cookies and other proposed identifiers that some in the industry are advocating for do not meet the rising expectations consumers have when it comes to privacy,” he said. “They will not stand up to rapidly evolving regulatory restrictions; they simply cannot be relied on in the long term.” Google bears the burden of reassuring advertisers that effective advertising is still possible as the company moves beyond tracking cookies. It is aiming to future-proof advertisers’ measurement of campaign performance with what it claims are “privacy-safe solutions.” The company is pushing hard for advertisers to adopt these new techniques, promising more actionable first-party conversion data. Although consumer expectations have changed, FLoC may not be the answer to the need for a privacy-preserving advertising model. So far it looks like Google will have an uphill battle to gain more broad support from browsers, advertisers, and consumers. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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