After having a late lunch I was happily surprised to see R2D2 mentioned on WP Tavern.
I was pretty excited to get a mention but really R2D2 is nothing without the work of Joen Asmussen, Lance Willett and Konstantin Obenland work on Twenty Thirteen.
Category Archives: WordPress
It’s not all about the commit
You can learn so much just by trying to submit a patch. It’s is nice to get the commit but it isn’t a requirement to learn something about the issue.
The back story
You can’t put rgba inside of a placeholder property, for example:
::-webkit-input-placeholder {
color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.30);
}
but you can do this:
::-webkit-input-placeholder {
color:#e8e8e8;
}
Also Takashi Irie (author of Twenty Fourteen) after some research found out that Firefox 19 lowers the opacity of the placeholder to 0.54 by default. To get the correct color you need to reset it.
So to properly use the color and the opacity you want you would have to do this:
::-webkit-input-placeholder {
color:#e8e8e8;
opacity: 1;
}
What I though would be an easy open source hat trick.
- Trac Ticket
- Patch Submission
- Core Contribution
Turned into a learning something new and you know it’s not all about the commit…
WordPress 3.7 is out. Matt named this release “Basie” After Count Basie. On the WordPress IRC dev channel I said:
3.7 also known as “The Count”
So go ahead and read up on WordPress 3.7 and all of it’s awesomeness…
Contributing to open source along with client work at the same time is harder then I though…
But once the contribution has been made it’s so rewarding…
I love mockups… Even if they don’t get used it’s a great way to think about things.
~ Tammie Lister on Mockups in conversation regarding Featured Content UI for WordPress.
2013 – Twenty Thirteen
When New Year’s comes along we all make a few New Year’s resolutions that are unachievable or broken instantly but this year I made my goals more work orientated that would help me achieve more productivity and make it easier to collaborate with others. ( I actually start writing this post in February. )
One of these goals were met by finding a project management software that actually works for me instead of me working for it. I found that with Asana, It’s is as much of a project management software that I need and when I asked others to start using it there wasn’t a whole lot of backlash and they all started using it. It has cut down on the mass emails with multiple changes.
The other major goal was use of a revision system for larger project. I found that easily accomplished with GitHub.
I found listing the combination of GitHub and Asana extremely useful and productive.
Other achievements were less business-oriented but more community orientated like submitting my first bug report in both WordPress and Firefox. Both of them are confirmed as a bug. It allow me to help other users and other developers showing what I am seeing and moving the project forward it feels good to help out.
Joey Kudish, Christine Rondeau and Flynn O’Connor all encouraged me to get more involved in the WordPress community as I had been doing a lot of withdrawals and not to many deposits into the community. But 2013 has been a huge year for me in terms of me contributing to the WordPress community and I think it has to do in part with meeting Matt Mullenweg at the first BuddyCamp conference in Vancouver.
- Speaking at the local Meetup on website backgrounds
- Speaking at WordCamps in Seattle and Vancouver.
- Redoing this site to be more blog like less portfolio like.
- Learning how to create a proper trac ticket.
While I did join the UI group I found it hard to keep up with the emails and weekly meeting and such when I had project deadlines looming of my work. But also the WordPress UI group merged and for good reason with the WordPress core dev group.
New Theme
Around the same time I was looking for a new theme for robertdall.com, as my previous theme Orange Coffee had been showing it age for quite some time. The new default theme Twenty Thirteen designed by Joen Asmussen under the direction of Matt had just been themed and was in alpha stages of development. I took an active participation in the testing phase.
This lead me to learning the complete development process for default themes.
- How to create a proper trac ticket
- Connected to GitHub WordPress Repo
- Creating Git Ignore file so I can update core files without losing my content or config.
- Learning some basic command line functions.
- Learn how to test and submit patches thanks to Scribu’s post on how to contribute to WordPress.
While it’s a short list… It was a journey of sixth months taking me from barely understanding how to submit a trac ticket to actually having css committed into Twenty Thirteen.
While I like Twenty Thirteen there was a couple things I really wanted to change as well. I needed something darker and to keep the post titles above the content. Ever since wp 3.4 (June 2012) child theme were accepted into WordPress theme directory I decided to submit my very first theme to the theme review team.
So if you reading this blog post your actually seeing my first child theme that was accepted into the WordPress theme directory called R2D2.
For a guy who never makes New Year Resolutions I certainly didn’t break this one… In fact I contributed more the WordPress community then I though I was ever capable of…
What’s next?
Funny you ask that… development for the new theme Twenty Fourteen just got started and yup I plan to be involved with this one too… All this open source contributing too… It’s addictive as you get some much back in return.
How to submit a WordPress Trac Ticket
I was asked by the organizers of WordCamp Vancouver to give a lighting talk on how to submit a proper Trac Ticket for WordPress. Here is the transcript of the talk. Hopefully the video will make it’s way up to WordPress.tv.
After using WordPress for years my First Trac Ticket I submitted was actually only last December and interesting enough it’s still open as of August 2013.
But first… a word from Nacin…
security [at] wordpress [dot] org
What is Trac?
Trac is open source software that WordPress uses. It is the place where all of those design / functionality decisions are made. It is part project management, part bug tracking software, part repository (via SVN). It is all of those things at exactly the same time. The only thing it doesn’t do is provide support… but don’t worry that’s what the forums are for…
Check list before submitting a ticket.
a. What version of WordPress are you running?
– If your running alpha or beta make sure you grab the latest build before submitting.
b. Has it been submitted previously?
– Do a query on trac before submitting a new one.
c. Check in various browsers. Is it consistently replicated? Which browser does what?
– Record in the description what you find…
d. If you turn off all of your plugins does still happen?
e. If it’s something visual take screenshots. Annotate if possible.
– You can upload screenshots directly to trac or use something like cloud app.
f. A link to the page or site with the issue.
g. Make sure the code is actually core and no your own.
– eg. If you child themes has code in the function file that overwrites the parent theme then it is your code and not core.
You now have all the details required to complete a useful trac ticket.
Go to https://core.trac.wordpress.org login using your same WordPress.org login details.
Properties:
1. Summary: Title of the Trac Ticket.
2. Description: Explain the issue explain as much as you can. You can also upload screenshots directly to trac. A lot of people use screenshot programs like cloud app. Any service will work as long as it is reliable.
3. Type: Bug, Enhancement or Feature Request
4. Version of WordPress:
– Which version of WordPress are you using to product the bug?
(eg. Trunk is currently in 3.7 and once that is release Trunk will be into 3.8)
5. Workflow Keywords: (couple common ones)
• Reporter Feedback (needs more detail from the actual reporter of the ticket)
• Needs Patch (needs a patch ???)
• Has patch (either you or someone has submitted a patch to this)
A full list of keyword descriptions can be found here.
If you don’t know what the keywords means then don’t apply it. Core committer like Sergey Biryukov who truly have amazing attention to detail in Trac will apply keyword if needed. (If you put enough detail in the description they will be able to figure it out)
6. Priority: Reporters without commit status can’t set this… But they range from:
• Trivial
• Major
• Normal
• Highest OMG BBQ.
“Which means it is as Important as BBQ… Sadly you don’t get BBQ if you close this ticket.” ~ Samuel Wood ( Otto42 ) WordCamp Seattle 2013
7. Component:
• Default Themes are called: Bundled Themes as they are bundled with core.
• Post Format are about Post Format’s
• Widgets are about Widgets
• etc…
If you don’t know where it fits just choose general and those above you on the “Trac food chain” like Sergey will find the proper home…
If you want to find out more about the WordPress Trac and how to submit tickets visit the WordPress Core Contributors handbook.
Were going to party like it is 2003! WordPress 10th Anniversary Social
Five Years ago I sign up for WordPress.com blogging account for a course I was taking on blogging and I really haven’t looked back since then. And since then my addiction to all things WordPress has really taken hold.
And now WordPress is turning 10 and the local WordPress Community is having it’s first social event of the year celebrate.
To RSVP go to the Vancouver WordPress Meetup Group Page. We have a limited space of 80 spots and 49 people are already attending so you don’t want to miss out!
Taking your website backgrounds to the next level Talk
With the varying shapes and sizes of screens these days. Websites either need to flex to the size or make use of a background colour or image to fill in the spaces around the edge. These spaces are somewhat neglected and sometimes lack the connection to the branding of the site and or company. Through a lot of trial and error Robert Dall of 32spokes shows you some tricks and trades to use in my daily development.
This talk was given at the 2013 WordCamp Seattle and previous at the Vancouver WordPress Meetup Group. held at The Network Hub.
Below is a list of the website mentioned along with the slides from the talk.
- deviousbehaviour.ca
- uprisingbreads.com
- rmrecycling.org
- isthatontheisland.ca
- pedalsandpaddles.com
- 6smarketing.com
This video is from the Meetup Presentation at the Network Hub.