WordPress Dev Chat For 10-08-09

demetris – http://wordpress.org/about/features/ — This page needs some work, or maybe a rewrite — A few months ago a poor soul was asking at the forum when the pMachine importer will be ready! :-D — I’m willing to help with this

I agree with what demetris had to say regarding that specific page on the WordPress.org site. The entire features page needs to be slimmed down, updated, and rewritten so common folks can understand it. I proposed the feature comparison between WordPress.org and .com as a starting point for listing features. http://get.wp.com/ Demetris stated he would create a draft of his proposal for the page on the Codex and then provide updates in follow up meetings.

2.9 feature freeze and scheduling.

While the target date for 2.9 was October 31st, it’s obvious now that won’t happen. The overhaul of the media user interface  is more work than first thought which is the cause for the delay. However, WordPress 2.9 has been declared feature frozen with the exception of three features. oEmbed, post thumbnails, and media UI. The target date for the first beta of WordPress 2.9 is October 31st. From that point forward, progress will be assessed each week with RC releases in November. The final version of WordPress 2.9 has a shot at being released in the second half of November or early December.

Also, once 2.9 hits RC1, work will begin on WordPress 3.0.

I asked Jane about the progress of the CMS handbook project.

Not a top priority, given things will change with 2.9 and no eager dev volunteers to write stuff . Will start push again after meetup. If someone wanted to devote 10-15 hours per week to wrangling people, it would move faster, but no one has volunteered that kind of time, and 2.9 is a higher priority for me personally, since my part has to be done before we hit freeze. Once we’re in beta etc, I’m not needed much on 2.9, and I can shift focus to docs.

Rough Sketches of Media UI.

This link was passed on during the dev chat which contains a PDF file showing pictures of a hand drawn user interface for the Media component. I have a hard time figuring it out without pretty pictures so hopefully, once Jane’s Macbook AIR gets fixed, we can see prettier versions.

ShaneF proposed changing /wp-admin/upload.php to /wp-admin/media-library.php

Shane believes upload.php has no meaning as it’s usually a library.

Jane – I’d suggest waiting until merge with MU and looking at all those names
MarkJaquith – Yeah, our wp-admin URLs are a mess, this needs a comprehensive look at a later date.

How To Participate:

If you want to suggest a topic to be discussed at the next meeting, you can by visiting the WordPress development updates blog. If you would like to participate in the chat next week, install IRC or an IRC compatible client and connect to the following IRC server.

chat.freenode.net or any random server on the Freenode network and then join this channel at 5PM Eastern time or 9PM UTC Thursdays. The meeting day was changed to accommodate European users.#wordpress-dev.