Starting next week, we’ll be attempting to follow an agenda during the Wednesday dev chats. If you would like to propose a topic for the July 8, 2009 dev chat, please submit it in the replies/comments to this post. We’ll post an agenda the morning of the dev chat (i.e., about 8-10 hours in advance).

Deprecated clean_url() in favor of esc_url(), and deprecated sanitize_url() in favor of esc_url_raw().

Deprecated wp_specialchars() in favor of esc_html() (also: esc_html__() and esc_html_e()). Using wp_specialchars() with more than one param works for backwards compat. Also, esc_html() (or wp_specialchars() with one param) escapes quotes, just like esc_attr(). This buys security for plugin authors who were mistakenly using a one-param wp_specialchars() call in an HTML attribute. See this wp-hackers message for more detail.

Trying to keep the commit candidates under control. Every time I look up the list gets bigger.

Standardizing and shortening the WP security escaping functions.

attribute_escape() is now esc_attr()

Additionally, you can do attribute escaping and translation in one go. Just add the translation function to the end. Like so:

• esc_attr__() — translate and return, attribute-escaped.
• esc_attr_e() — translate and echo, attribute-escaped.

Will be following up with esc_html (with __() and _e() variants), esc_url(), maybe some more. Will be nice, short, predictable, and allow you do translate/escape in one go without a lot of nested parenthesis.

Going through some of the accessibility improvements. 2.7 was tested with JAWS but there were some changes in the UI since then. Does anybody use JAWS or another screen reader, or know somebody that uses it? Feedback is welcome.

There was some talk last night about maybe doing a little design brushup on the admin header/nav. We only have a couple of days to decide on the design changes if we want to include it in 2.8. Would like to give community designers the opportunity to do a mockup (could give them a psd of the current style), but since they’d need to submit their design suggestions by Monday, and I’m nervous that there might be some backlash for the short/no notice. I mean, MT didn’t get any notice either, so it seems fair. It’s a pretty small design job… Jaquith did a quick mockup in 5 minutes. If anyone does take up the challenge, we can post the comps for a vote on Tuesday. What do people think?

All of the redesigned widgets functionality is in place in trunk. Only remaining is some improvement to the visual design for the widgets screen in admin.

The new way to add widgets to WordPress is by extending WP_Widget. All widgets created that way have support for multiple instances.

Also all existing widgets will have to be converted to this system as the previous API functions will (most likely) be removed in 2.9. This is quite easy and any of the default widgets can be used as an example.

A typical widget is constructed as follows:

class WP_Widget_Archives extends WP_Widget {
	function WP_Widget_Archives() {
		$widget_ops = array('classname' => 'widget_archive', 'description' => __( "A monthly archive of your blog's posts") );
		$this->WP_Widget(false, __('Archives'), $widget_ops);
	}

	function widget( $args, $instance ) {
		// displays the widget on the front end
	}

	function update( $new_instance, $old_instance ) {
		// update the instance's settings
	}

	function form( $instance ) {
		// displays the widget admin form
	}
}

// register the widget
add_action('widgets_init', 'my_super_widget_init');
function my_super_widget_init() {
	register_widget('WP_Widget_Archives');
}

For more details and examples check wp-includes/widgets.php and wp-includes/default-widgets.php.

The plugins management page has been overhauled to better match other management pages. There are status filters for All, Active, Recently Active, Inactive, and Update Available. There’s also search and paging with a screen option for setting the number of plugins to show per page.

When on a management page, the Favorite Actions dropdown now defaults to the create page that corresponds to that management page, and vice-versa. For example, visit edit.php and the dropdown displays “Create Post”. Visit post-new.php and the dropdown displays “Edit Posts”.