Gutenberg 6.3 Improves Accessibility with New Navigation and Edit Modes

Major accessibility improvements are the headline feature of this week’s Gutenberg plugin release. Version 6.3 introduces new Navigation and Editor modes to address long-standing problems navigating the block UI with a screen reader. The editor is now loaded in Navigation mode by default. Riad Benguella described it as “an important milestone in terms of accessibility of the editor” and explained …

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WooCommerce 3.7 Introduces New Blocks, Updates Minimum WordPress and PHP Requirements

WooCommerce 3.7 was released today after four months in development. This minor release is backwards compatible with previous versions. Despite containing more than 1,290 commits, 3.7 is smaller than previous releases, as the WooCommerce team is working towards delivering more frequent releases to improve the stability of the platform. WooCommerce 3.7 bundles updates from the WooCommerce Blocks feature plugin version …

Jetpack 7.6 Improves AMP Compatibility, Adds Preview and Upgrade Nudge for Blocks Only Available on Paid Plans

Jetpack 7.6 was released this week with several improvements to the plugin’s AMP compatibility. Automattic was one of the earliest publishing partners on Google’s AMP project, as well as the original author of the official AMP plugin for WordPress. This release makes three more Jetpack features compatible with AMP: Related Posts now display on AMP views. AMP images are now …

O’Reilly Partners with Netlify to Publish Free E-Book: Modern Web Development on the JAMstack

If you are following the JAMstack (JavaScript, APIs, and markup) craze and want to learn more about the history and best practices of the architecture, O’Reilly has published a short book called Modern Web Development on the JAMstack that is now available as a free download. Netlify CEO Mathias Biilmann, who coined the term “JAMstack” and pioneered hosting for it, …