December 2018

There were 18 posts published in December 2018 (this is page 3 of 3).

Quoted

Following is a transcription of what are apparently official comments from Yoast regarding the slated WordPress 5.0 release on Thursday. I’m providing this transcription for those who are using Twitter clients which do not support alternative text, (essentially the blindness-specific Twitter client), as well as for those on Facebook, Micro.blog and Mastodon. The quote reads:

We vehemently disagree with the decision to release WordPress 5.0 on December 6th, and think it’s irresponsible and disrespectful towards the community. However, we’re now going to try and support the community as well as possible and we hope to show everyone that Gutenberg is indeed a huge step forward.

Yoast is one of the largest plugin developers in the WordPress space, and they’ve made no bones about their support for accessibility. This tweet, for example, carries alternative text, and Yoast has made it a point to ensure that the user interfaces for their Search Engine Optimization plugin are as accessible as possible given the current WordPress interface. Joost’s comment is probably as professional as it’s going to get on this score, and know, I’m not counting the “everything-is-awesome” type comments that will inevitably be shared by Matt from Gutenberg’s cheering section in the score. There’s been a lot of chaos around Gutenberg and accessibility, and it’s heartening to know that so many in the WordPress space, including some rather large plugin and theme shops, are fighting alongside traditional accessibility advocates. All of you have my sincerest thanks.

Read New 5.0 Target Date

Based on the stability, testing, and reports on the release candidates for WordPress 5.0 so far, we are now targeting Thursday December 6th for public release and announcement. 5.0.1 will open for commits soon, and will be an area people can choose to focus on at the contributor day at WordCamp US …

For those of you who are reading this in your inbox, the context for this post is the recently-published, (as in yesterday), target release date for WordPress 5.0, which rolls out the new Gutenberg editor. I’d like to say I’m surprised by this, but I’m just not. I find myself asking a few questions: First, I find it very difficult to believe that a piece of software that is being released with known, significant issues, (up to and including significant accessibility issues, and no, that doesn’t just apply to assistive technology users), can be declared stable enough for release. Accessibility problems, just by themselves, are bugs. Well, they are if you claim to consider accessibility a priority. Next, if the plan was to release the Thursday before WordCamp US, (and I have to concur with those who believe it has been), what was the point of all those one-on-one office hours? How is anyone in the WordPress community supposed to believe that Matt is dealing in good faith when he has apparently convinced himself of the superiority of his own definition of quality and stability, and that his cause is so right and so perfect that it’s worth literally sneaking a major release out the door while everyone is traveling to WordCamp US? I am not opposed to the concept of Gutenberg, and I never have been. I know the current editor is not perfect, and that it can be improved. But this whole thing wreaks of fanaticism, arrogance, dishonesty, a complete disregard for any standard definitions of quality control, (there’s no way, absolutely none, that enough time for actual testing, complete with stress cases, could have been performed between RC 2 and RC 3, and that’s not even counting RC 1), a complete disregard for those of us who work with WordPress users outside of what is apparently a hermetically sealed bubble of perfection in which Matt lives, and the day-to-day experience that has informed our comments since day one, along with a healthy dose of hope as a strategy when it comes to Gutenberg. The question and answer session at this weekend’s State of the Word address is going to get interesting, as is the dev chat this Wednesday.
Read Prototypes and production

Don’t build prototypes with a production mindset. Don’t release prototype code into production.

I don’t think I’m too far off base to suggest that so many of the problems we face on the web could be avoided if the prototype mindset discussed in this article were limited to the prototype phase by developers and designers, and kept completely separate from the production process.
Today has been brought to you by: A raging, all-day headache, making final preparations for Wordcamp US attendance this weekend, and gratitude that I only have one more work task to complete.
No Firefox that’s a bad Firefox! You don’t eat all the RAM! #SuchMonday #SuchCoffee
Listened Are we going to regret this?!!? by The Brad & Matt Limited Edition Totally Unoriginal Random Show Beta 1 from Anchor

We blab on about why we’re doing this new show, comparing our 2018/2019 goals, WTF Gutenberg, and more.

Follow us: @williamsba @mattedeiros

I’m only part of the way through this and I’m already feeling bad because I haven’t sat down and artiulated a bunch of goals for the new year. The only one I have so far is importing my entire Facebook archive into my personal site. I totally feel Brad on the blogging thing though because it’s enjoyable but I think spending all the time on social media kind of drains that. There’s a solution for this though: Indieweb, and blog posts don’t have to be five thousand words long. They can be a single photo or a bookmark or, like this one, a record of listening to a podcast episode. There are already lots of resources for adding various post kinds functionality to WordPress sites, including bookmarklets and apps for your phone. Definitely makes blogging easier.