WordPress Monthly Dev Digest #019

Originally posted on my website on June 30th 2020

WordPress June in short.

In June there were two releases of the Block editor. Gutenberg 9.3, among other things, brought padding controls for the cover block and a link color control was added to the paragraph, heading, group, columns, and media&text blocks. Both these options are optional and need to be enabled using the add_theme_support function. It also added a parent block selector to the block controls.

Gutenberg 8.4 introduced amazing image editing tools to rotate and crop images as well as control aspect ratio, zoom level, and position. It also comes with multi block controls allowing you to select multiple blocks of the same type and change their attributes all at once. Plus you can now install block plugins from the block directory directly from the editor's block inserter.

The core team also announced they will be upgrading to the latest version of jQuery over the next couple of releases. There is a feature plugin available if you need to test your themes and plugins against these updates.

And finally the month June was also host to the WordCamp Europe 2020 (online) conference with some amazing speakers. If you missed it you can check out these streams: Friday Track 1, Track 2 and Saturday Track 1, Track 2. And the Conversation between Matt Mullenweg and Matías Ventura.

WordPress:

• The ultimate developer's guide to the WordPress database by Iain Poulson.
• Video: Custom bulk actions and admin notices in WordPress by Alex Young.
• WordPress block development made easy by WebDevStudios
• WordPress themes are dead. Long live WordPress themes! by Infinum.
• WordPress Gutenberg block plugin builder by Jeffrey Carandang.
• Enqueue Gutenberg block assets for rendered blocks only.
• Adding a custom welcome guide to the WordPress block editor by Leonardo Losoviz.
• Video: Introduction on how to contribute to Gutenberg hosted by Riad.
• Video: WordPress theme development tutorial 2020 by Adrian Twarog.
• How to create your first WordPress plugin by Ikechi Ude.
• Snippet #015: Add a column to the posts admin overview page by Stephan Nijman.

Php:

• Video: Installing Xdebug on macOS, Valet, & VSCode by Derick Rethans and Matt Stauffer.
• Video: Find your match with regex by Alex Vanderbist.
• Kirill Smelov's PhpStorm tips in 9 gifs by Tomas Votruba.
• Don't write your own framework by Brent.

Javascript/React:

• 3 ways to check if an object has a property in Javascript by Dmitri Pavlutin.
• Javascript best practices for readable and maintainable code by Mahdhi Rezvi.
• The 9 most common mistakes developers make in #JavaScript (and how to fix them) by Dipto karmakar.
• Detecting if a user is online/offline with Javascript by Niall ‍Maher.
• How I work with arrays by Zell Liew.
• Recursion in JavaScript explained using a freeCodeCamp challenge by Nehemiah Kivelevitz.
• My favourite JavaScript array methods for dealing with Api data by Stephan Nijman.
• Cancel Axios request to prevent React from yelling at you by Stephan Nijman.

Html/Css:

• Here's what I didn't know about "content" by Manuel Matuzović.
• A user's guide to Css variables by Lea Verou.
• Building a tooltip with only Css by Nathan Kallman.
• Keep your Css/Sass files organised with a table of contents by Adam Lacey.
• Grid for layout, Flexbox for components by Ahmad Shadeed.
• Styling layout wrappers in Css by Ahmad Shadeed.
• CUBE CSS: A CSS methodology oriented towards simplicity and consistency with a heavy dosage of pragmatism by Andy Bell.
• What Css tip do you want to share with others? by Adrian Perea.
• A Css cheatsheet by Yoksel.
• Building a hexagonal grid using Css grid by Jesse Breneman.
• Complete Css guide for beginners and not so beginners by JoelBonetR.
• This is a very cool Css folded poster effect by Lynn Fisher.
• Custom shape dividers app.
• Css margin collapsing -- what it is and why should I care by Js Craft Academy.

Misc:

• New Font Awesome version 6 is comming.
• Emmet cheatsheet.
• Is WebP really better than Jpeg? by Johannes Siipola.

Suggestions?

If you have any suggestions for good article or resources please do let me know! Follow me on twitter @Vanaf1979 or on Dev.to @Vanaf1979 to be notified about the next article in this series, and other WordPress development related stuff.

Stay safe and have a great Juli.