In this week’s episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I review WordPress 4.3. We discuss the Kim Parsell memorial scholarship and the events that led to its creation. We also discuss Nick Haskins’ rebrand of Lasso. Last but not least, we spread the news that Automattic is hiring. Stories Discussed: WordPress 4.3 “Billie” Named…
After four months of development led by Konstantin Obenland, WordPress 4.3 “Billie” named after jazz singer Billie Holiday, is available for download. This release features menus in the customizer, strong passwords by default, site icons, and variety of other improvements. Menus in the Customizer You can now create, add, and edit menus in the customizer…
WordPress 4.3 is on schedule to be released August 18th and contains a number of improvements. Among the enhancements to the visual editor are text patterns. Text patterns or text shortcuts allow you to quickly add unordered lists, ordered lists, headers, and blockquotes without having to use a mouse. In the visual editor in WordPress…
When menu management was proposed to be merged into WordPress 4.3, a common complaint expressed by readers was that clicking the Widgets menu item in the admin bar loads the customizer instead of the Widgets admin screen. WordPress 4.3 separates the management interfaces by moving the Customize link to the top-level menu of the admin…
WordPress 4.3 beta 3 was released this week right on schedule, and beta 4 is expected to arrive next Wednesday. This release includes more than 140 fixes and improvements since last week’s beta. One of the most important changes you’ll notice is that the Site Icon feature is now available in the customizer in addition…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I preview WordPress 4.3. We discuss what WordPress.tv should do with old videos now that the site is six years old. There’s a conference this weekend devoted to the Genesis Framework and we let you know how you can watch it for free. Theme translations and…
PHP 4 style constructors are being deprecated in WordPress 4.3 to ease the transition to support PHP 7. According to Aaron Jorbin, on the Make WordPress Core blog post, WordPress r32990 introduces a change so that all classes use the PHP 5 style constructors, while still retaining the PHP 4 style constructors for backwards compatibility. A…
WordPress 4.3 is right around the corner with beta 1 released and ready for testing. According to the 4.3 project schedule, there will be no more commits for new enhancements or feature requests from this point on. Contributors are now focusing on bug fixes and documentation ahead of August 18th, the target release date. With…
WordPress 4.3 is on track to include a new site icons feature, which will allow administrators to easily upload an image to be used as the favicon and app icons for a site. Favicons have traditionally been handled by WordPress themes or plugins, but the new core support means that users no longer have to…
Anti-customizer vitriol reached its zenith last week when the Menu Customizer plugin was officially approved for merge into WordPress 4.3. Opponents of the feature voiced concerns about the readiness of the UI for all screen sizes, particularly for the desktop where many find the experience of managing menus to be crammed into an unnecessarily narrow…
The Menu Customizer plugin was merged into WordPress trunk today and will be one of the headline features of the 4.3 release. Roughly a week ago the feature plugin was tentatively approved for merge, pending an a11y audit and PHP and JS tests. Following an overwhelming amount of negative feedback from the community, core contributors…
Ryan Boren published a post to the Make/WordPress Core blog this afternoon, titled Trust, Live Preview, and Menus in the Customizer. In it he clarified the reasons why he and several other core contributors are committed to iterating the customizer and identified the feature as a means of building user trust through live previews. Being…
WordPress 4.3 release lead Konstantin Obenland posted notes from this week’s core development chat, confirming that the Menu Customizer plugin has been conditionally approved to merge. The approval is pending a few conditions that will be required before officially merging it: Complete a11y audit. Address possible blockers. Merge php tests. Add JS tests. One of…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Dan Griffiths, founder of Section214. We spend the first half of the show learning about Griffiths’ interest in technology at a young age. Once out of the military, Griffiths experienced difficulties finding a job. He discovered Easy Digital Downloads and explains how…
WordPress 4.3 development kicked off this week with release lead Konstantin Obenland at the helm. The main focus of this release will be to improve the experience of using WordPress on touch and small-screen devices. Contributors will also be renewing efforts to improve the Admin UI and the Network Admin UI, particularly as it relates…