Suggest Agenda Items for March 4th 2010 dev chat

Meeting Summary Feb 25, 2010

Agenda:

• Sprint status
• Woo Menus update
• Merge update
• Schedule update
• Multi-site configuration implementation

Summary:

• Sprint Status. Lots of patches being committed. Can always use more patches and more testing. Do it by Monday or hold your peace until next cycle for enhancements and feature requests.
• Menus, janewells. Coming along nicely in trunk. The UI looks more like a plugin than core, so changes listed on wpdevel being worked on. Accessibility will be worked on after freeze. pthdnbr, filosofo and dremeda offered to tackle accessibility.Jane will make tickets for items in the wpdevel post.
• Merge update, wpmuguru and rboren. Patches, patches and more patches.
• Schedule update. On track for March 1 freeze.
• Non-agenda topic: hakre brought up test suite. Core devs agreed patches are top priority until freeze, and test suite can be looked at after freeze.
• Multi-site configuration implementation, westi. Suggested a code change from constant to filter, wpmuguru agreed along with others in chat. See chat transcript for specific code snippets. Westi pondering doing it for AUTOSAVE/TRASH intervals as well.

Shortest meeting ever.

Menus UX Manifesto

A Menus Manifesto?

Now that the new menu system patch is in and working, I’ve been able to start going through it for UI stuff. The are some things I think we should consider changing to fit into the WP UI, though based on timing I’m also okay with letting some of it slide until next release if needed. Here are the things on my mind, which hopefully we can touch on during today’s dev chat.

• Icons. The edit/delete/view icons are inconsistent with the way we handle actions everywhere else in WordPress. We have two options here: we can have icons made that will match WP core icons, or we can get rid of the icons and change the UI a bit to match existing interaction models. If we go with icons, I’ll ask Ben to make us some that match better, which might be the better part of valor to get 3.0 out on time, rather than trying to make everything perfect. Release early and keep iterating, right?
• Accessibility. The menus function as it stands now is completely inaccessible. There doesn’t seem to be a no-JavaScript version, which we have to have. It will be clunky and ugly, like widgets, but we NEED to do this. Icons for actions rather than text is an accessibility no-no, which is another reason to move away from them eventually, but the bigger problem is that we need a no-JS version. I’m emailing the accessibility list to see if anyone there is willing to pitch in and help.
• Little arrows on the left of each item. These should be removed. We use little arrows everywhere else to indicate an open/close functionality. If we need a symbol to indicate hierarchy we could use dashes like some other plugins do, or better and more attractive, just indent the bar itself? We also need to get rid of those little mini-arrows in the modules on the right when you click on View All.
• Everywhere else in the admin, the right-left convention is opposite of how it is on this screen. For example, in Widgets, the available widgets are on the left and the completed sidebars are on the right. On categories and tags, you add on the left and see the updated list on the right. It would probably make sense to swap the menu and the menu controls so the controls are on the left and menus are on the right.
• Buttons. The Save button should use the primary button class (blue). It should also be furthest to the right. Delete should not be a button, but a red link, and to the left.
• Display. Like some other people, I’m wondering why each menu has to have its own screen, when it’s generally a pretty narrow column.
• Default menu. When you first go to the menu screen, it says you don’t have any menus, to create one, but that’s both confusing and incorrect. There is a default menu in place using pages (or categories, in some themes). We should either a) (and preferably) Display the pre-existing menu as Main Menu or some such, or b) change the default text to explain that they currently use the default menu, and this screen is for customizing. It’s also highly unclear how someone should name a menu, or what the relationship is between menus and themes. If someone creates 20 menus but none are supported by the theme, what will happen? It should really pre-fill what menus you have available to you, just like it does with sidebars on the widgets screen.
• The click to add icons perform the same action as the page/category titles themselves. The icons impair accessibility. If we are to have a second addition mechanism, it should be a text link, not an icon.
• The mechanism for adding URL and adding page/category is inconsistent. Pages and categories have a list from which you can add, while links are added to menu directly. It would be more consistent to create link rather than add link when it’s first entered, then have link appear in a list below, as the pages and categories do, so that links could be added to/removed from menus without just deleting them. This would also follow the principle we established in widgets that you shouldn’t lose settings when you deactivate something like that.
• The metaboxes down the right all show the on-hover gray arrow in the right header corner, but the boxes don’t collapse. Either make the boxes collapsible or get rid of the hover arrows.
• Instead of the edit icon, each menu item should have the hover arrow, which would open it to the edit view. Then we should use save/close/delete as in widgets, thus getting rid of the delete icon as well. This is the interaction model for this type of metacontent and should be followed.
• I don’t really see the need for a View link (icon) from each menu item.
• Whatever we do in terms of these changes, hooks need to be included so that Woo can get their own current look back if they choose, as that was part of the agreement.

This is the kind of thing that we need a styleguide for, which the UI group has recently started working on.

Agenda for Feb 25th 2010 dev chat

• Sprint status
• Woo Menus update
• Merge update
• Schedule update
• Multi-site configuration implementation. Peter (http://wpdevel.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/suggest-agenda-items-for-feb-25th-2010-d/comment-page-1/#comment-5060)

I’ve written a quick page on what the weekly developer chats are about to hi-light the focus on core development issues rather than general WordPress issues. It is linked from the sidebar and you can also visit it here: http://wpdevel.wordpress.com/weekly-developer-chats/

I’d like to give some props to Jeffr0 for putting his money (well, time) where his mouth (well, typing fingers) is. Over the past couple of weeks he’s been hopping into the Ideas forum and helping to manage older threads by looking up which features have been implemented already (and in which versions) and which features have plugins addressing the requested functionality, which has made it much easier for me to close the outdated threads. There are still about 2300 threads to review, so if anyone wants to jump in and help, that would be fantastic.

If you want to help (this is an easy way to contribute for those who aren’t coders), go to http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/view/considering and start looking at threads. Start from the pages at the back of the list, and on each one you can help resolve:

• Read the thread.
• If you don’t know if something exists as a plugin or has been implemented, use Google.
• Add a comment to the thread indicating the status/outcome. If you found an appropriate plugin, link to it.
• Add the “modlook” tag.
• Bask in the glow of knowing that this small task is part of a big job, and is much appreciated by the community.

The sooner we get the old ideas cleared out of there, the sooner it can become more useful as a discussion tool (and clear up Trac to focus on accepted features and enhancements). So thanks, Jeffr0, and anyone else who steps up to join us in this task!

There’s going to be a patch sprint of sorts for 3.0 this week. Please grab a ticket, triage, patch or test: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/report/32. The feature freeze is March 1, so everything still on that report in 7 days from now will be punted to a future release.

There are a few incomplete tasks out there that need to get done to finish implementing new features (both small ones on that report, and the major 3.0 features). If you’re interested in helping but aren’t sure where you can, venture over to #wordpress-dev.

Plugins can now include videos in their readme.txt files

The plugins directory now supports videos in readme.txt files. YouTube, Vimeo, and WordPress.com VideoPress videos are supported.

Videos are included using one of two formats.

Shortcode: YouTube, Vimeo, WordPress.com VideoPress

Include a normal looking shortcode anywhere in the readme.txt file.

For YouTube and Vimeo, the shortcode has one unnamed parameter: the video’s URL.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EiKx_WSesk]
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/173714]

For WordPress.com VideoPress videos, the shortcode has one unnamed parameter: the video’s ID. The shortcode can be copied from the video’s embed menu.

[wpvideo OO4thna8]

To prevent shortcodes from being parsed, enclose the shortcode in backticks.

`[wpvideo OO4thna8]`

Autolink: YouTube, Vimeo

Include a YouTube or Vimeo URL by itself on its own line in the readme.txt file.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EiKx_WSesk
http://vimeo.com/173714

Example

http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/mdawaffe-test/trunk/readme.txt

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mdawaffe-test/

The Validator shows the videos too.

NB: Directly including object/embed HTML into the readme.txt file is not supported; the goal of the readme.txt file is to be human readable.

PS: Videos are not currently supported as replacements for screenshot images in the screenshots section. It’s silly that the Plugins Directory doesn’t yet support that It’s on the todo.

Suggest Agenda Items for Feb 25th 2010 Developer Chat

Meeting Summary for February 18, 2010 Dev Chat

• Menu management needs work. Jeffikus and wpmuguru will work together this week to try some fixing up to use custom post types. Dogfood, eaten.
• Rboren says we can bump jQuery UI to 1.7.2 in core to work with menus.Made change during meeting: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/13201
• We’re behind schedule. Going to bump 2 weeks to target for launch May 1. Will update project schedule page later tonight.
• WordPress Planet discussion not core code talk, so going to set up a forum thread on wordpress.org.
• Westi going to write up a short description for this site about what is considered in scope for dev chats.
• Core plugins are coming along slowly but surely. When there’s something to look at westi will announce it. Both health-check and post-by-email are close to Alpha state. Anyone interested in getting involved should join the appropriate mailing list: http://plugins.lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo
• Nacin, our most recently added committer, has created a report, http://core.trac.wordpress.org/report/32, that lists all enhancements and feature requests <= 3.0. That excludes tasks, bugs, and multisite (since we need to include these things).
• Taking advantage of the delayed schedule, next week will be a patch sprint.