The release of WordPress 5.4 is scheduled for March 31, 2020! 💙
Led by Matt Mullenweg, coordinated by Francesca Marano and a management team of 8 people, WordPress version 5.4 will offer technical improvements to the CMS and numerous developments on the Gutenberg editor. Of course, there will also be a focus on fixing many bugs and making small enhancements that will benefit everyone.
You may also like : The Different Types of Professional Training
As a user, you will be able to enjoy new blocks, many improvements to the editor, new embedded content, and an improved WordPress administration experience.
As a developer, WordPress 5.4 will bring 122 enhancements and new features and 210 fixes. Of course, all of this will cause code changes at the core of the CMS, which may require you to make adjustments to your site’s code, themes, or plugins.
Related reading : Breton News and Initiatives: Dive into the Heart of the New Generation
In this article, we will focus specifically on the main technical changes in this new version.
Accessibility
Among the
14 accessibility changes in WP 5.4, there are changes in the loading order of the admin bar in the DOM, the calendar and recent comments widget, in the management screen menu, and bug fixes reported by the accessibility audit conducted in WP 5.4; last year by WPCampus.
Editor/Gutenberg
The development of the editor has continued its rapid progress since WordPress version 5.0. Today, Gutenberg 7.5 has been integrated into WordPress 5.4, marking a difference of 10 versions of Gutenberg from the version that was integrated into WordPress 5.3 last November! Therefore, WordPress 5.4 includes Gutenberg versions 6.6, 6.7, 6.8, 6.9, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, and 7.5, along with performance fixes and enhancements since version 7.6 that found a way to sneak into WP 5.4! 😎
The article on WordPress 5.4 Beta 1 highlights some of the new features of the editor. Since WordPress 5.3, an impressive reduction in editor loading time of 14% has been made possible, and especially a reduction in the wait time before being able to insert content of around 51%!
Below you will find links to the developer notes, in English. These changes are related to the following:
Adding two new blocks: social network and button
New blocks in WordPress 5.4
An update to the button component
An updated button component in WordPress 5.4
Fullscreen mode now enabled by default in the editor
Fullscreen mode enabled by default in the editor
Block collections
Block collections
Customizable keyboard shortcuts
Block editor keyboard shortcuts in WordPress 5.4
The new API for controlling block style changes
New: Block Variations API
The new API that allows themes to control the use of CSS gradients
New gradient theme API
The new @wordpress /create-block package
New @wordpress /create-block package for block scaffolding
CSS markup and style changes generated by the editor
Markup and style changes
Updates to the editor API
Updates to the General Block Editor API
The Customization Tool
Among
the 14 changes made to the customization tool (called Customizer in English), we first note that WordPress 5.4 will significantly improve the accessibility of selectable elements (focus state in particular) in line with the many improvements already approved by WordPress 5.3. Also note the addition of functions and existing hooks (these are the actions and filters available in the WordPress API), the removal of the pre-composed meta tag apple-touch-icon-precomposed which is now obsolete, and improvements to the logic for selecting menu items.
Please note that some unused PHP classes from the WordPress core are now formally deprecated and therefore you will no longer need to use:
Formal deprecation of certain unused Customizer classes in WordPress 5.4
Menu
Among the 5 changes regarding the Menu component, it is worth noting that WordPress 5.4 improves keyboard accessibility of the item selection panel that will go into menus, and improvements have been made to the interface.
If plugins add custom fields to menu items, you may need to update the code to use the new wp_nav_menu_item_custom_fields hook:
The new hooks allow you to add custom fields to menu items
Privacy and Personal Data
Among the 15 changes regarding this WordPress component, here are the most important changes:
- Personal data exports now include session tokens, community event locations where we reviewed the dashboard, their location, and, importantly, the custom metadata of users.
- Personal data exports also include a JSON file and a table of contents.
- New filters are available to modify the headers of all private data emails.
- The tables for private data requests have been improved.
- The wp_get_user_request_data() function has been completely replaced by the wp_get_user_request() function for better clarity.
All these changes are detailed in a single development note:
Privacy updates in 5.4
Changes to the REST API
Among the 22 changes related to the REST API, the following are particularly important:
- WordPress 5.4 supports the OR value of the taxonomy query relationship parameter
- Adding selective links integrated Changes to the WP_REST_Server method
Significant changes to the REST API are listed in this article:
Changes made to the REST APIs in 5.4
Shortcodes/shortcodes
WordPress 5.4 will introduce apply_shortcodes() as an alias for do_shortcode(). Developers are encouraged to use the new feature. However, the previous one will remain maintained to ensure backward compatibility.
WordPress 5.4 introduces apply_shortcodes() as an alias for do_shortcode()
Widgets
Among the 9 widget changes, WordPress 5.4 improves accessibility and usability of the widget management screen and introduces changes to the Recent Comments and Calendar Widget.
Changes related to Calendar Widget markup in WordPress 5.4
Other changes for developers
Simplifying the deployment of local development environments on WordPress
wp-env: Simple local environments for WordPress.
Modification of favicon display request handling
Improvements to favicon management in WordPress 5.4
And finally, a small floral series of various and sundry changes
A section also contains a number of important changes, including:
- Better error information in wp_login_failed
- Adding site ID in the multisite newblog_notify_siteadmin filter
- New video integration for TikTok
- Removal of CollegeHumor integration
- Storage of original URL of attached media in meta _source_url
- Loading the admin bar using wp_body_open
- Removal of duplicate ID in the Last Comments widget
- A new parameter in retrieve_password() lostpassword_post action
- Theme headers now support “Requires at least” and “Requires PHP”
- The Delete_Posts feature will no longer trigger PHP alerts for custom post types
Everything is detailed in English in this development note:
Developer Various changes focused on WordPress 5.4
As a reminder, the release of WordPress 5.4 is scheduled for March 31, 2020. You can already test it in the Release Candidate version by installing the official WordPress Beta Tester plugin, then going to its settings and checking the “Beta” version /die and then updating the installation in the usual way.
WordPress Beta tester
Read more at blog-introduction.fr