The WordPress Governance project is looking for new leadership after its current leaders, Rachel Cherry and Morten Rand-Hendriksen, announced that they will be stepping down. Weekly meetings have been canceled until the organization selects new leadership. After its introduction at WordCamp Europe 2018, the project went through what its leadership believed were the appropriate channels for launching it through the …
Toolbelt: A New Jetpack-Inspired Plugin with a Focus on Speed and Privacy
WordPress theme and plugin developer Ben Gillbanks is building a Jetpack alternative with an emphasis on speed, simplicity, and privacy. Toolbelt is a new, lightweight plugin that offers a collection of functionality that is commonly-used on WordPress sites. Currently available modules include features like breadcrumbs, browser native lazy loading, a Portfolio custom post type, related posts with images, responsive video, …
NetNewsWire 5.0 RSS Reader Rebuilt from Scratch, Now Free and Open Source
NetNewsWire 5.0 was released this week as a completely rebuilt, free and open source Mac app. Back in its earlier days, the 17-year old RSS reader was widely regarded as the best available. Since its creation, the app has changed hands multiple times through two acquisitions, finally landing back home with its creator, Brent Simmons, in August 2018. NetNewsWire 5.0 …
StandardJS Ends Controversial Funding Experiment
Feross Aboukhadijeh, maintainer of StandardJS, has formally ended the funding experiment he started lasted week, which inserted ads in the terminal whenever Standard 14 is installed. Although the experiment met widespread aversion, it successfully captured public attention and put a spotlight on the critical need for a viable model of funding open source infrastructure. It also uncovered some intense presuppositions …
Gutenberg 6.4 Adds New Typewriter Experience, Cover Block Resizing, and Block Inserter Help Panel
Gutenberg 6.4 arrived this week with two more improvements to the Cover block. The background can now be set to a solid color (in addition to images and videos). Users can also easily resize the block, making it far more useful for those who are designing their own pages. One notable change to Image block in this release is the …
StandardJS Pauses Experiment with Ads in the Terminal after Linode Pulls Sponsorship
Feross Aboukhadijeh, maintainer of the StandardJS library, a JavaScript style guide, linter, and automatic code fixer, launched an experiment last week that places ads in the terminal in order to fund development. The experiment has since been paused after receiving negative feedback from the developer community, causing Linode, one of the initial sponsors, to remove its advertisement. “I think that …
Top Fifty WP: New Website Ranks Plugins by Downloads per Day
The team behind Pootlepress has launched a new website that displays the top 50 WordPress plugins by downloads per day. It uses the WordPress.org Plugin API to pull the previous day’s download stats from plugins hosted in the directory. The site also shows the average rating as a percent in the right-hand column. As one might expect, the most popular …
php Central Europe Conference Canceled Due to Lack of Speaker Diversity
phpCE, a central European PHP conference that was previously scheduled for October 4-6, has been cancelled due to a public fiasco resulting from a lack of gender diversity in the speaker lineup. The event, previously known as PHPCon Poland, was set to be held in Dresden, Germany, after the concept changed last year to rotate host cities and include a …
Chrome 76 Adds Native Lazy-Loading, WordPress Contributors Continue Discussion Regarding Core Support
lazy cat – photo credit: Kate Stone Matheson The latest version of Chrome (76) shipped with a new “loading” attribute that allows developers to specify resources, such as images and iframes, to defer loading until the user scrolls nearer to them. In the past, developers have used third-party libraries to achieve lazy loading but soon this will no longer be …
WordPress 5.3 Development Kicks Off: UI Polishing, Editor Improvements, and New Twenty Twenty Default Theme
WordPress 5.3 release dates were confirmed this week. The timeline has the official release arriving November 12, 2019, with a decent margin of time to avoid WordCamp US (early November) and the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday week at the end of November. Beta 1 is expected September 23 and a Release Candidate is scheduled to follow on October 15. The scope …