Tag Archives: Support

New Social Web Foundation Launched with Automattic’s Support   – WP Tavern

[ad_1] The Social Web Foundation was officially launched on September 24, 2024, with a mission to foster a “growing, healthy, financially viable, and multi-polar Fediverse.” This non-profit organization is spearheaded by Evan Prodromou (Research Director), Mallory Knodel (Executive Director), and Tom Coates (Product Director) and is dedicated to uniting social networks through the open standard protocol, ActivityPub. The Fediverse is a collection of interconnected, decentralized social media platforms that communicate using open protocols, with ActivityPub—developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)—as the primary standard. “Until now, no major organization has taken on advocacy for ActivityPub as its central goal. Many people have ideas about what the Fediverse needs to be bigger, safer, and easier to use. But the solutions they propose fall between the cracks of anyone implementer or service. We want the SWF to be the entity that takes on those jobs.”, said Evan Prodromou, often referred to as “The Father of the Fediverse.” Tom Coates emphasized the foundation’s straightforward goal: “Fundamentally, its goal is pretty simple – it’s there to help the Fediverse grow in a sustainable and healthy way that benefits everyone.” The Social Web Foundation is our best chance to establish the conditions in which the new social media operates with zero harm. – Mallory Knodel The foundation aims to address challenges within the ActivityPub ecosystem and support its growth, especially in the commercial sector. Key areas of focus include: People: Educating the public about the Fediverse and its benefits. Policy: Clarifying policy frameworks for international and federated networks. Protocol: Developing and maintaining open standards. Plumbing: Building the necessary infrastructure Thirteen prominent companies, including Automattic, Mastodon, Meta, Ghost, and Medium, are backing the foundation. Automattic & Fediverse Automattic’s involvement with the Social Web Foundation comes as no surprise, given its long-standing contributions to the Fediverse. Back in 2021, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg expressed interest in bringing ActivityPub support to Tumblr. In 2023, Automattic acquired the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress from German developer Matthias Pfefferle and made the ActivityPub feature available across all WordPress.com plans. “Automattic is excited about the launch of the Social Web Foundation and its mission. We’re eager to collaborate with the Foundation to expand platform diversity and enhance the support for various content types—especially long-form content—within the Fediverse, fostering greater interoperability across the ecosystem.”, said Matthias Pfefferle, Open Web Lead at Automattic. To know more about Automattic and Fediverse, check the YouTube series, The Fediverse Files.  [ad_2] Source link

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Openverse Audio Catalog Passes 800,000 Files, Audio Support Now Out of Beta – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Openverse, formerly known as Creative Commons Search before it joined the WordPress project, has passed an important milestone with its support for audio files. The catalog has now indexed more than 800,000 audio files and its development team has taken audio support out of beta. Openverse visitors can now confidently search for and explore audio files for use in their videos, podcasts, or other creative projects, all available for free use under Creative Commons licenses. It is an incredible resource that is expanding and improving every day. Users can search on any device, but I found that Openverse audio searches and files are surprisingly easy to navigate on mobile. Search results can be filtered by permitted use, license, audio category, extension, duration, and source. Previewing works well and each file has attribution information readily available to copy. Clicking on “Get this audio” will take the visitor to the file on the external collection’s website where it can be downloaded. Deeper integration with WordPress core is on the roadmap for Openverse files. It would also be interesting to see WordPress’ core Audio block integrate access to Openverse, in addition to pulling files from URL or the media library, the same way the Image block allows users to browse Openverse. Gutenberg contributors are currently exploring how they can add basic Openverse integration to the inserter. Matias Ventura, lead architect of Gutenberg, has proposed adding a Media tab to the existing tabs for Blocks, Patterns, and Reusable blocks, which allow dragging and dropping content into the canvas. This would offer more convenient access to the media library while building pages. “The inserter panel should support the ability to drag media from the inserter into the canvas, including dragging into block placeholders to quickly update patterns and such with your own content,” Ventura said. “The Media tab would allow users to choose between categorized assets from the media library, and from Openverse.” Gutenberg engineer Nik Tsekouras created a PR with a prototype, basically a proof-of-concept, to explore how this might be implemented. Development is still in the exploration and early stages, but this looks like a promising new integration that would make it easy for WordPress users to tap into Openverse’s catalog of 600 million free creative works. [ad_2] Source link

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Open Collective Launches New Way to Support Open Source through Public Stock Shares – WP Tavern

[ad_1] It’s no secret that companies are making loads of cash using open source technology. A 2021 survey of 1,250 IT leaders commissioned by Red Hat found that 90% are using enterprise open source software. Following the trail of major acquisitions (Red Hat at $34B, GitHub at $7.5B, and MuleSoft $6.5B), it’s becoming more common to see companies built on open source valued at billions of dollars. With so much invested in open source infrastructure, many companies will assign employees to work on specific important issues for the projects they depend on, or hire them to support these projects full-time. This is an effective way to support maintainers when it works out but sometimes projects need to be able to funnel support to those who can further the software but who don’t happen to work for one of these corporations. Open Collective is exploring a new way for individuals and companies to give back to the projects they use by donating public stock. The new initiative is called Open Stocks. It allows donors to support open source without having to pay capital gains tax on the appreciated amount of their stocks, which is up to 37% for those based in the US. They receive a tax write-off at the current market value of the stock. Donating some of those profits is one way to lessen the tax burden for capital gains while keeping the open source software alive that made the public stock possible in the first place. Open Stocks is using Overflow, a VC-backed philanthropy platform, to streamline the stock donation process, which may have the potential to increase the average donation amount for open source projects. The startup claims “the average stock donation through Overflow is 47X the average online ACH/debit/credit donation.” Here is how it works: Donors select the open source collective they want to support and then proceed to the checkout process, which happens on the Overflow website app. Donors are asked to connect directly to their brokerage account by authenticating through the app. The Open Source Collective team will receive the donated stock converted to cash and the cash is then transferred automatically to the specified project’s balance with a public contribution notice on their page. It is not very clear up front for donors what fees they will have deducted from their total donation. Open Collective did not publish this information, and it wasn’t available on the Overflow website. Open Collective co-founders were not immediately available for comment on this. All currently-registered collectives are automatically able to receive stock donations. The announcement hints at future support for non-traditional forms of payment: Stocks and shares are a huge part of the economic power of traditional geopolitical structures, and while we believe that equivalent access to those structures is a positive move for the communities we support we can’t ignore that the world is changing… how we embrace and organize around that change may have an even bigger impact on our work.  Open Collective co-founder Pia Mancini confirmed on Twitter that donation via cryptocurrencies is next on deck for the organization in its efforts to support open source creators. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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ACF 5.10 Introduces Block API v2 Support, Block Preloading, and Security Improvements – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) has released version 5.10, the first major release since the plugin was acquired by Delicious Brains. It introduces several new features that were previously experimental, closing out tickets that were started by previous owner Elliot Condon. The release enables HTML escaping by default, which helps prevent Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. It runs content rendered by ACF through the WordPress wp_kses() function. There was a little confusion about how this works and the release post has been updated to clarify: “It’s important to note that this only affects content rendered by ACF in your WordPress dashboard or any front-end forms rendered through acf_form(),” Iain Poulson said. “This will not affect field values loaded through API functions such as get_field() and the_field(). We don’t make any assumptions about where you are using your field values within your theme and do not escape to them as a result.” Version 5.10 also introduces support for the WordPress Blocks API v2 for ACF blocks. WordPress 5.6 came with a new Block API that makes it easier for theme and plugin developers to style the block content with more consistent results matching the front end. The ACF team has created a Block API v2 help doc with examples that help developers update their blocks and make use of the new block filters included in the update. Other features introduced in this release include block preloading turned on by default, a new full-height setting for blocks, opacity support for the color-picker, and many bug fixes. Next up on the roadmap for the plugin is adding WordPress REST API support to ACF field groups. “As API-powered JavaScript front-ends become more and more popular in the WordPress space, it’s clear that many of our customers want this functionality included in ACF core,” Poulson said. “We also plan to improve the performance of the plugin and work on other quality of life features. Now that our development team has a solid handle on the codebase and the release process, we can start working on these more complicated but long-requested features.” Shortly after the acquisition, Delicious Brains representatives published a pinned thread in the forum, clarifying expectations for free support and response times. The official support forum for both free and PRO users can be found at support.advancedcustomfields.com, which is more active than the WordPress.org forums. Since the plugin is more developer-focused, the team is taking a looser approach to support by giving the community a place to help each other: We rarely provide support in either forum. The exception is after a major release, when we keep an eye on both forums to spot any problems caused by the release. The primary purpose of both forums is for people in the WordPress community who are having trouble with Advanced Custom Fields to help each other. Response times can range from a few days to a few weeks and will likely be from a non-developer. We jump in now and then when the description sounds suspiciously like a bug.  The release of version 5.10 is a good sign that ACF will continue to make progress under its new ownership and a reassuring milestone for the small minority of users who were unsure about the plugin’s future. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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Classic Editor Support Extended To 2022

[ad_1] Hey, WordPress fans. We are checking in with your latest dose of weekly WordPress news. This week, the WordPress team announced they will continue to support the Classic Editor plugin through 2022. Beyond that, Google Search completed the rollout of the link spam update. This is an important update for WordPress site owners and content creators who publish affiliate links or sponsored posts.  Let’s get to all of this week’s WordPress news… WORDPRESS NEWS AND ARTICLES TUTORIALS AND HOW-TOS RESOURCES [ad_2] Source link

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WordPress Classic Editor Support Extended for at Least Another Year – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Last week, I reached out to several members of the core WordPress committers to see if we could get an official word on whether Classic Editor support would continue beyond the mere months it seemingly had left to live. I received a semi-official answer but was asked to hold off on publishing for a more detailed and nuanced response. Earlier today, WordPress executive director Josepha Haden Chomposy announced the official decision. It was just as expected. The WordPress project would continue supporting the Classic Editor plugin for a while longer. “At the time, we promised to support the plugin through 2021 and adjust if needed as the deadline got closer,” she wrote. “After discussing this with Matt [Mullenweg], it’s clear that continuing to support the plugin through 2022 is the right call for the project as well as the community.” As of now, classic users have a one-year extension. However, the plugin will not suddenly stop working on December 31, 2022. That is merely the current deadline for the “full support” phase. It should continue working well beyond whatever date is set for that support window to close. Designer Mark Root-Wiley reached out to WP Tavern via Twitter last week, but others had been asking the same question for a while. For some, they needed to know if they could continue supporting specific client needs. For others, it was a bludgeon to use in conversations for all editor-related things. Whatever the reason, before today, the last word had been from a Make Core post in November 2018. “The Classic Editor plugin will be officially supported until December 31, 2021,” wrote core contributor Gary Pendergast in that three-year-old announcement. It was a shock for many at the time, uncertain whether the new block system would meet their needs. While three years may have seemed like plenty of time to ditch the classic in favor of the modern WordPress editor, the current stats show that the project still has a few miles yet to go. Currently, there are over 5 million active installations of the Classic Editor plugin. I am still waiting for a more specific tally, but no one has provided an answer yet. At best, we think the counter turns over at 10+ million, so we can speculate on the floor and ceiling for possible usage. Active installs are not the entire picture either. For example, we have the plugin installed here at the Tavern for legacy reasons but do not use it in our day-to-day work. We can likely disable it altogether. WordPress has no telemetry system for tracking the usage of such features. While the install total will not always make the picture clear, the current number supports the push for continued maintenance. “I think it’s important to note that the plugin is not going anywhere,” said core committer Jonathan Desrosiers. “It will continue to be listed on the .ORG repository for the foreseeable future.” He pointed out that understanding the next phase of the Classic Editor plugin meant looking into the level of effort required to support it since 2018. The overwhelming majority of the changes in that nearly three-year timeframe have come down to keeping up with: Text changes. Adjustments to prevent warnings/errors and promote consistency across supported PHP versions. Changes to deprecated action/filter hook calls. “It’s been almost three whole years, and the plugin has largely required very little maintenance to continue functioning, and the bulk of maintenance has been to limit warnings and notices in debug logs,” he said. The goal of the Classic Editor plugin was to help ease the transition to the block editor. Thus far, there have been eight major WordPress releases since the switch in version 5.0. “There’s a theory called the diffusion of innovations that looks to explain how, why, and at what rate new technology spreads,” said Desrosiers. “It separates adopters into several groups based on when they are willing to take the jump: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. I truly think that we have seen a good portion of the late majority beginning to move towards using the block editor. This can also be confirmed by the plugin’s install growth, which has been slowing and plateauing this year.” He had expected the previous deadline to mark the next stage of the Classic Editor plugin, called the “sunset” phase. It would be a time when the WordPress project moved from full support to encouraging late adopters to transition to the current editor to get the plugin’s numbers down. “The context I gave previously shows that, until now, that the level of effort needed to keep the plugin working on newer versions of WP has been pretty minimal,” said Desrosiers of the potential sunset phase. “I expect that pattern to continue thanks to backward compatibility. If any security issues or major problems are encountered, they’ll, of course, be fixed. Any incompatibilities with the plugin and newer versions of WP will be considered on a case by case basis, but little to no time will be put towards bug fixes.” However, this sunset phase will have to wait. We will not see it until at least the current support window closes on December 31, 2022. WordPress project leaders will need to reevaluate the plugin’s lifespan at that point. The other looming question would be whether core WordPress would move specific pieces of its system to the Classic Editor plugin, such as allowing custom post types to support the old editor or the meta box API. “There are no plans at this time to move any of the underlying ‘classic’ parts from core to the plugin,” said Desrosiers. “I’m sure that removing these parts will be evaluated at some point in the future, but when that will be is not clear.” Even when official Classic Editor support reaches a hard deadline, it does not mean such a traditional editing experience will cease to exist. Plugins like Disable Gutenberg have promised longer lifespans than the initial

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Gutenberg 11.3 Introduces Dimensions Panel, Adds Button Padding Support, and Speeds Up the Inserter – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Earlier today, Gutenberg 11.3 landed in the WordPress plugin directory. The latest update introduces a new dimensions panel for toggling spacing-related block options. The Button block now supports the padding control, and the Post Featured Image block has new width and height settings. One of the release’s highlights was a speed improvement for both opening and searching within the inserter. The opening time dropped over 200 ms, from 370.35 ms to 137.28 ms. Search speed went from 190.37 ms to 67.24 ms. The latest release includes a simplified color picker library. Rich previews for links, a feature introduced in Gutenberg 10.9 for external URLs, now works with internal site links. Theme authors should enjoy the reduced specificity of the reset and classic editor stylesheets. Such changes always make it a little easier for theme authors to match editor and front-end styling. Dimension Panel for Spacing Controls Toggling the padding and margin controls for the Site Tagline block. Gutenberg 11.3 introduces a new Dimensions panel for blocks that support either margin or padding controls. The feature adds an ellipsis (…) button in place of the typical open/close tab arrow. Users can select which controls they want to use. The long-term goal is to clean up the interface, only exposing controls that a user actually needs. Because such needs are subjective, allowing users to toggle them on/off is an ideal route to take. The current downsides are twofold. Once choosing to display margin or padding controls, the panel itself cannot be collapsed. This exacerbates the very problem that the new feature attempts to solve — decluttering the sidebar interface. For me, at least, I always want quick access to spacing controls. However, I do not always need them shown. The second issue is that the user choice of what to display does not seem to be stored. Each time you work with a block, you must select which controls should appear. The new Dimensions panel is only one part of the process of wrangling sizing (width and height), spacing (padding and margin), and related controls for blocks. Work toward a more well-rounded solution is still underway. Presumably, the development team will address these issues and others in future releases. However, those who run the Gutenberg plugin in production should expect oddities with usage. The Block Visibility plugin has the most user-friendly version of such a toggle control right now. It is not yet a perfect solution, but it works a little better than what is currently in Gutenberg. Button Block Padding Testing the new Button block padding option with TT1 Blocks. It is no secret that I dislike the default padding of the Button block when using the TT1 Blocks theme (block-based version of Twenty Twenty-One). I have made it one of my missions to routinely point it out, even going so far as refusing to use the block in the last call for testing as part of the FSE Outreach Program. An oversized button is not always the wrong stylistic choice on a webpage. Context matters and I somehow continue to run into scenarios where I need something a bit more scaled back. Control over the Button block’s padding has been on my wish list for months, and the Gutenberg development team delivered. As of 11.3, users can control the padding of individual Button blocks. It will now appear as an option within the new Dimensions panel mentioned earlier. Prayer answered. Now, let us move toward adding padding controls to all the blocks. The one potential issue some users might run into is maintaining consistent spacing when using multiple Button blocks together. The easiest way to do this is to add and style the first, then duplicate it to create others with the same spacing. This is not a new issue; it applies to all Button options where users want consistency within a group. Featured Image Dimension Controls Adjusting a Post Featured Image block’s dimensions. The Post Featured Image block has finally received a small but handy upgrade. In the past, users and theme authors only had a single option of deciding whether to link it to the post. Now, they can control the width and height of the image. If a user sets a height for the image, the editor will reveal a separate “Scale” option with the following choices: Cover (default) Contain Stretch What do these options actually do? That would be a good question. Even as someone in the web design and development loop for close to two decades, I sometimes forget and must look them up. They are values for the object-fit CSS property and are likely to confuse users in many instances. Cover and contain allow the image to fit within the containing element’s box while maintaining its aspect ratio (no stretching the image). The difference is that the cover value will be clipped if it does not fit and the contain value may be letterboxed. A stretch value will fill its container regardless of the aspect ratio. Depending on the image’s aspect ratio on its container, each of the values could essentially display the same thing on the screen. Or, they could provide wildly different results. Coupling these dimensions controls with wide and full alignments (also width-related options) could make for some unpredictable experiments too. The theme designer in me wants to disable the UI for this altogether and present something slightly more controlled: an image size selector. Such a selector should not be confused with width and height controls. WordPress theme authors have been registering custom image sizes for years. The primary use case for this was featured images. Users can use these sizes with the current Image and Latest Posts blocks. However, they do not yet have this option with Post Featured Image. I am in the camp that believes image size controls should have been the first addition to the block. It is such an integral part of WordPress theme design that it cannot be left out, and I have

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Gutenberg 11.2 Expands Color Support for Search and Pullquote Blocks, Introduces Experimental Flex Layout for Group Block – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Gutenberg 11.2.0 was released today with expanded color support for the Search and Pullquote blocks. Historically, customizing these elements has been out of reach for most users if their themes didn’t include them as options. This release introduces color support and border color support for the search button. Pullquotes are getting a similar treatment with border and color support, enabling some creative design options for those who enjoy taking the reins on customization. It’s these kinds of minute style changes that web developers would have been paid to perform back in the earlier days of theme customization gigs. Now the block editor enables anyone to jump in and do it themselves. These color support additions are part of a larger effort to improve the editor’s design tools to provide consistent application across blocks. “Another important goal of design tools is ensuring a wide range of exquisitely crafted patterns are possible; that best practices are not only possible but encouraged; and that customizing blocks is a consistent and natural experience,” Gutenberg Lead Architect Matias Ventura said in the ticket tracking design tool tasks. Gutenberg 11.2 also introduces support for a new experimental flex layout. The need for additional layouts was described by Rick Banister in a ticket submitted a year ago, requesting a “display horizontal” option for the Group block: When building patterns or trying to achieve a layout with multiple elements arranged horizontally it would help to have a parent block that would automatically arrange its children on a single line. Columns can be used to arrange things side-by-side, but they add quite a lot of extra nesting if you only need to arrange one set of blocks. We could leverage the Group block and add a ‘display horizontally’ or ‘act as a row’ option to it. It would wrap its children and act as a ‘flex container’ (display:flex; flex-direction:row;). Further flex parameters could be optional to align and distribute objects. A flex layout option has the potential to remove some of the complexity in nesting blocks. This early prototype shows a rough, unfinished UI for a layout switcher. It shows the difference between a flex layout and the default “flow” layout, which displays children one after the other vertically without any specific styles. The PR included in Gutenberg 11.2 makes it possible for blocks to support multiple layouts. Gutenberg engineer Riad Benguella said the plan is to introduce more layouts, such as “grid” and “absolute positioning container.” Adding “flex” layout support for the group block is the first step towards proving how multi-layout options can work in the block editor. “In the previous WordPress release, we introduced the layout config and the __experimentalLayout prop for inner blocks,” Benguella said. “The initial reason for these was to make alignments and content widths more declarative for themes. While this was an ambitious goal on its own and a hard one to achieve for the default layout, the goal has always been to absorb and support more kinds of layouts in the editor than the regular vertical list of blocks.” This experimental flex layout support can be useful for theme developers and makes sense in certain use cases with the Cover block, headers, social icons, columns, and other applications. The layout switcher UI is hidden in this release while the Gutenberg team works on a better design and wording for the feature. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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Gutenberg 11.1 Adds Drag-and-Drop Support for List View and Upgrades Block Borders – WP Tavern

[ad_1] The Gutenberg plugin continues to march forward. Yesterday’s release, coming merely a day after the launch of WordPress 5.8, brings several new features and nearly three dozen bug fixes. The big-ticket items are drag-and-drop blocks in the list view and a much-needed upgrade for border support. Theme authors should enjoy the ability to control the Columns block’s stacking on mobile and some updated design controls for nav menus. While labeled an “enhancement,” themers should also check their designs against a breaking change to the RSS block’s updated styles. Drag and Drop Blocks in List View Dragging a block around in list view. Drumroll, please. The moment we — or at least many of us — have been waiting for has finally arrived. The editor’s list view has become a powerhouse for managing long documents with many blocks. Over the past dozen or so releases, the development team has continued to tack on necessary feature after necessary feature. In version 11.1, users can drag and drop blocks from within the list view to order and organize content. However, users are not merely limited to moving things around within the list view itself. They can drag blocks from the list over into the content canvas and vice versa. I do not often use emoji, but sometimes I like to dole out a slow clap for a job well done. 👏 👏 Border Support Adding a dashed border to a Group block. I have already been having a bit of fun with the new border options. Lately, I have been in the holiday spirit because I was getting ahead and buying my Christmas tree in July (when you find the good deals). This inspired me to create a coupon code block pattern, and the Group block’s border support was perfect for this. Gutenberg 11.1 refines the user experience for border options. The development team tightened the UI and placed the settings into logical groupings. Only the following core blocks have partial or complete border support: Button Group Image Search Table Users can also define individual corners with the border-radius option in this update. I would love to see the same treatment for the top, right, bottom, and left borders in the future. I also would not mind seeing a double-border style. Columns Block: Stack on Mobile Adding post metadata to an unstacked set of columns. By default, individual Column blocks will stack on top of each other in mobile views. However, users can now disable this via the parent Columns block on a case-by-case basis. This has also been one of the missing pieces for more layout control in block themes. One of the primary use cases for a Columns block that does not break on mobile devices is post metadata sections that should be inline. For example, theme authors often want to align the post author, date, and comments link in a single row below the post title. This toggle switch sort of moves us in that direction. However, it is a stopgap solution that does not afford theme designers the flexibility they are accustomed to with CSS (this is not generally a complicated affair). Before block themes and the site editor are rolled into core WordPress, theme developers will need fine-tuned responsive control over the Columns block and, perhaps, some type of row/inline/flex block to go along with it. Theme authors who need to target the Columns block based on whether mobile stacking is disabled can use the .is-not-stacked-on-mobile class. Post Terms and Tag Clouds Controlling the number of tags output. The development team has crossed one of my months-long pet peeves off the list. In past releases of the plugin, the Post Terms block (variations of Post Tags and Post Categories) has displayed a pipe (|) separator between individual items by default. It now shows a comma, followed by a space. Theme authors can change this in their block templates, and users can customize it from the editor. The setting is located under the “Advanced” tab in the block options sidebar. The Tag Cloud block got a small but much-needed upgrade. Users can now set a limit on the number of tags to display. By default, it is set to show 45 tags. Navigation Submenu Colors The Gutenberg development team added two new color options for the Navigation block. Aside from its existing text and background colors, users can now change the text and background colors for submenu items. The Navigation block, while improved, still seems to be one of the trickiest pieces of the site-editing puzzle. It is trying to be the Jack of all trades, mastering few — if any — solutions. And, there is already a ticket gaining traction that would allow users to stuff a wider range of inner blocks into it. But, we have submenu text and background colors, which is a win. Only, they are named “Overlay Text” and “Overlay Background.” I am unsure whether it works as part of the mobile responsive menu. Gutenberg seems to have once again failed to bundle its front-end navigation JavaScript. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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WordPress 5.8 “Tatum” Introduces Block Widgets, Duotone Media Filters, New Emoji Support, and More – WP Tavern

[ad_1] WordPress 5.8 “Tatum,” named in honor of jazz pianist Art Tatum, landed earlier today. It is the second major release in 2021. It includes duotone media filters, block-based widgets, theme-related blocks, template editing, and theme JSON file support. The release also ships tons of other notable features, such as support for new Emoji and an Update URI field for plugin authors to offer custom updates. The latest update also drops support for IE11, saying goodbye to the era of Internet Explorer. Matt Mullenweg led the WordPress 5.8 release, which saw contributions from 530 volunteers. The entire release team closed 320 Trac tickets and over 1,500 GitHub pull requests. The official release squad members were: Release Co-Coordinator: Jeffrey Paul Release Co-Coordinator: Jonathan Desrosiers Editor Tech Lead: Riad Benguella Marketing and Communications Lead: Josepha Haden Chomphosy Documentation Lead: Milana Cap Test Lead: Piotrek Boniu Support Lead: Mary Job Duotone and Media Improvements Duotone filter + gradient overlay on a Cover block. The Image and Cover blocks received a new duotone feature. It is a filter that allows users to lay two colors over their media, creating unique effects. The colors overwrite the shadows and highlights of the image or video. Users can use WordPress’s defaults, theme-defined colors, or create their own mixes. WordPress 5.8 also introduces several upgrades to the media library. The development team replaced infinite scrolling with a “load more” button, improving the experience for screen-reader and keyboard users. End-users can now copy media file URLs from the Add New media screen. The latest release offers WebP image format support for the first time, and developers have a new image_editor_output_format filter hook to fine-tune the experience. Block Widgets Widgets screen with a Gallery block in the Footer sidebar. For the first time since the block system launched with WordPress 5.0 nearly three years ago, blocks are no longer confined to the post content editor. Users can now use them in any available sidebar. This is a stepping stone in the Full Site Editing experience that will eventually lead to block themes and the site editor. In the meantime, it is a way for users to begin trying out blocks in new ways. However, those experiences may vary, depending on the active theme. Some older projects may not hold up well with this system. Authors may need to opt-out of the feature. Users who do not want to use block widgets or run into trouble can install the Classic Widgets plugin. Query Loop and Theme Blocks Query Loop pattern inserter: carousel view. The power to create lists, grids, and other designs around a group of posts has long been solely in the wheelhouse of developers. Users had to rely on their themes or specialized plugins to make such changes. This is no longer the case. Users will have the power to create almost any type of post list they want from now and far into the future with the Query Loop block. And, this is just the beginning. WordPress 5.8’s new block is merely an introduction to what will eventually be one of the foundational elements to Full Site Editing in the coming years. As more and more blocks continue to mature, users and theme authors will continue building all sorts of layouts from this simple starting point. The Query Loop block will also be the first introduction of the pattern inserter to many users. This is a new tool that allows users to scroll through block patterns, choose one, and customize. In the future, it will become a more prominent feature. Inserting lists of posts is just scratching the surface. WordPress 5.8 ships a new “Theme” category of blocks for users to play around with. Many of these are primarily for use within the Query Loop, such as the Post* blocks. However, others like Site Title and Site Tagline will be handy in the template editor. Template Editor Creating a custom landing page template. The new template editor provides users with a method of creating reusable templates. And, they do not need a 100% block theme to do it. The feature opens an overlay from the content-editing screen for users to customize their page header, footer, and everything in between. This is essentially a scaled-back version of the upcoming site editor. With 5.8, its primary use case will be for creating custom landing pages. It is a lot of power in the hands of the average user. And, it helps WordPress inch closer to its goal of not only democratizing publishing but also design. The downside to this feature? It is currently opt-in. The active theme must declare support for users to access it. Many will not see it until developers submit updates. Developers: theme.json Support Real-world theme.json file. WordPress 5.8 lets theme authors begin tapping into global styles and settings configuration via the new theme.json system. In the coming years, this will be the foundation of how themers build their projects. Essentially, the new file is a bridge between themes, WordPress, and users, a standardized method of communication that puts them all on the same page. Theme authors define which settings it supports and its default styles. WordPress reflects these via the editing interfaces and on the front end. And, users can overwrite them on a per-block basis or, eventually, through the Global Styles feature. Right now, it is an opt-in feature that both traditional and block themes can utilize. Themers will want to start moving their projects over to using it now that WordPress 5.8 is on the doorstep. 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