Dev Chat Summary for April 29, 2015

BuddyPress 2.3.0 Schedule Update

• BP 2.3.0 Beta 1 release has been postponed to next week because some features are not done yet (see trac tickets below). Deadline to complete feature for inclusion in BP 2.3.0 has been set this Saturday, May 2nd.
• BP 2.3.0 RC 1 is scheduled two weeks before release ~ May 12th.
• Target release date for 2.3.0 is May 26th, three days before BuddyCamp in Miami, Florida.

Star Private Messages

• (#6331) @rayisme has a patch and is “just re-testing everything, but would appreciate some feedback on the general approach.” @johnjamesjacoby said he will be reviewing and testing the patch.
• Update: @im4th and @boonebgorges have tested the patch and have given their feedback.

XProfile fields used for signup should be configurable

• (#6347) @johnjamesjacoby mentioned that this still needs unit tests. He will get the tests in Friday “with a commit-ready patch for review.”

Attachment Library

• (#6278) @im4th would like to commit the latest patch on this ticket. This last patch contains a back compatibility fix for versions of WordPress < 4.0.
• Dev feedback needed.

Avatar UI

• (#6290) @im4th mentioned that he would need to check for WP version compatibility since this UI requires Plupload 2.1.1 to maximize cross-browser compatibility. This version of the script was introduced in WP 3.9. While the general mantra is to check for feature compatibility and not version compatibility, @boonebgorges and @johnjamesjacoby gave thumbs up for the version check since this was the better course of action for this feature.
• Update: This ticket is now a done deal. Testing and feedback welcome.

Update about the Blogs single items

• (#6026) While this ticket was not discussed during this dev chat, it was previously tagged for 2.3.0 and bears mentioning. The team has decided to postpone it to 2.4 dev-cycle because of the sheer scope of the improvements suggested by @im4th in the patches.

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1430333988003331
(You need a Slack account to view the logs.)

#activity

#6026, #6278, #6290, #6331, #6347, #dev-chat

A good way to shape the future of BuddyPress Attachments is to take care of Avatars

As you never miss the great dev-chat summaries @mercime is posting with love, you already know the core team has been working on a new BuddyPress Attachments API for the 2.3 release.

You should know 2.3 will bring a new class, BP_Attachment, developers will be able to extend to manage user uploads. In core we are using it to take care of avatar uploads. We will soon write a codex page about it, but if you’re eager to play with it, you can already observe what we’re doing in the BP_Attachment_Avatar class (see #6278).

You should also know, we’ve been working on a richer user interface to upload / crop / set a profile photo for a user or a group. It landed in trunk yesterday, we’re very excited to have it in our next release and we hope you are too 🙂 (see #6290)

The Upload view of the Avatar UI

Members will be able to use their computer’s webcam to set their profile photo if they are using a browser supporting getUserMedia.

Camera view of the Avatar UI

It will be possible to edit a member’s avatar from his extended profile in WordPress administration.

Crop view in wp-admin/extended profile

A few notes:

• It’s not removing the legacy screens, it’s actually using them as a fallback if javascript is disabled.
• Although we’re convinced it’s a great improvement, some of you might feel better with the legacy interface. If so you will be able to disable the new UI by using this filter add_filter( 'bp_avatar_is_front_edit', '__return_false' ) in your bp-custom.php file for instance.
• For the first introduction of this feature, we wish to “keep some control” over the Backbone templates. These templates will be organized in an “_attachments” folder. The underscore prefix means : “we advise you to avoid overriding this folder’s templates from your theme”.
• About theme compatibility: the “avatar” templates of the template pack we ship with the plugin (bp-legacy) will use a new template tag to display the interface. If you are overriding these templates from your theme and if by the time 2.3 will be released you forgot to update them, we will try to load the interface using one of these template hooks :

template hook	template file
do_action( 'bp_after_profile_avatar_upload_content' );	buddypress/members/single/profile/change-avatar.php
do_action( 'bp_after_group_admin_content' );	buddypress/groups/single/admin.php
do_action( 'bp_after_group_avatar_creation_step' );	buddypress/groups/create.php

#6278, #6290

Dev Chat Summary for March 25, 2015

Avatars, an extensible UI

• (#6290) @im4th reported that he gave a demo of the new Avatars UI at WordCamp London last weekend.
• Discussions touched on where special templates would be included in backend administration, from where to include the UI templates so that this feature would be theme-independent and could still be overridden by theme or plugin authors like they do with template parts.
• @im4th also said that if the BP Attachments API (#6278) is aimed to help us then help them deal with attachment, maybe we should try to help them with the UI Part.
• @johnjamesjacoby: While it may not make sense for v1, I would like for this to be something all components could lean on in some way: sending attachments in a Private Message, attaching one to a friend request, etc.
• @im4th thinking about : 1/ Put attachments UI in bp-legacy: BuddyPress is making sure everything is fine for the introduction of the feature and 2/if everything is ok, then open UI to the plugins world.

Update XProfile UI to better match current WordPress design

• (#6318) @johnjamesjacoby updated the Profile Fields UI in the backend using the recent improvements done to the WordPress administration area. Design feedback is welcome.

BuddyPress Companion stylesheet for Twenty Fifteen

• (#6291) @hnla has posted the initial patch and screenshots for the companion stylesheet taking on the challenging member navigation links, among others. Feedback included avoiding vertical navigation within content area. Additional feedback and participation, welcome.

Create New Invitations API

• (#6210) @dcavins reported that he’s just about has the group invite tests written. He continued, “Have the API pretty much written. Once all the tests are in place, I’ll update the group functions to use the API and see what I got wrong.”

2015 BuddyPress Survey

• (#5980) The survey deadline has been extended to April 8, 2015. Participation in the survey and promotion are welcome.
  https://twitter.com/buddypress/status/580822590266044416

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1427313681000039
(You need a Slack account to view the logs.)

#5980, #6210, #6278, #6290, #6291, #6318, #dev-chat

Dev Chat Summary for March 18, 2015

Improve representation of blog posts in the Activity Stream

(#6177) @djpaulgibbs introduced the new BP_Media_Extractor class and has committed this to trunk. This new class will “extract comprehensive media information from a new/updated blog post and use the information to build a much richer excerpt for blogs posts for activity items.”
Testing and feedback welcome.

Attachments API

(#6278) @im4th worked on the BuddyPress Attachments API by introducing 2 new classes.
1) BP_Attachment: the base class to manage the uploads of attachments.
2) BP_Attachment_Avatar: extends the base class to manage all avatar uploads. These are now committed to trunk.
Testing and feedback welcome.

2015 BuddyPress Survey

(#5980) The number of respondents to date are lower than last year’s for the week. Extending deadline is a possibility.
Update: Many thanks to @photomatt and @otto42 for helping us promote this survey. Please RT and take the survey if you haven’t yet 🙂

Please take the 2015 @BuddyPress Survey and tell your friends! https://t.co/bgXhSNJBYF

— WordPress (@WordPress) March 20, 2015

Open Floor

• @ubernaut mentioned that a user has to save after each tab in the group creation process and noted that it would be better for a user to save only once after the process. @boonebgorges said that “rebuilding the way group settings tabs work, so that it could all be shown on the same screen – that would be pretty hard”, then advised @ubernaut to create a ticket for the feature. New ticket: (#6304) Group admin tabs should not require separate page loads for view/save.
• BuddyPress at WordCamp London. From @hnla: “We’re expecting a good turn out for the contributor day and preparing lots of fun stuff people can get involved in – 1001 fun things to do in BP code.”

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1426708839001276
(You need a Slack account to view the logs.)

#5980, #6177, #6278, #6304, #dev-chat

Dev Chat Summary for March 11, 2015

BuddyPress 2.3.0 Schedule

• Target release date: May 26, 2015
• Beta1 to be released ~four weeks before release date and RC1 ~ two weeks before
• There are 73 tickets currently open for this milestone. Patches welcome.

BP 2.3.0 Progress Report

New Notifications Meta (#6275)
@johnjamesjacoby reported that within the last two weeks, he worked on the new notifications meta table with accompanying database and caching routines, new template functions and filters, among others. These have been committed to trunk. Needs unit tests.

Attachments API (#6278)
@im4th has been working with @boonebgorges and @johnjamesjacoby on this new feature and it’s moving along quite rapidly. Feedback is needed on the lastest patch.

Avatar Upload UI (#6290)
@im4th has posted screenshots of the the UI for this enhancement in ticket. The Attachment API needs to be completed first as this feature requires AJAX and other methods to be introduced in the new API. Possible blavatar addition if there’s time.
@johnjamesjacoby noted that get_avatar has a bevy of new filters and functions in WP core now and added, “Eventually we might be able to ditch a bunch of our avatar code as a result. get_avatar_url() & get_avatar_data().”

Invitations API (#6210)
@dcavins commented that he’s making good progress on this new API,” but slowing down to see how the real world works (group invitations) and finding some strange things.” He needs to finish writing test coverage before attempting to use the new API functions for group invitations. @boonebgorges has been giving him advice on unit tests and looking over his proposed changes.

Improve representation of blog posts in the Activity Stream (#6177)
@djpaulgibbs has added screenshots and patches for this enhancement. Feedback is needed on the lastest patch re architecture.

Relationships API (exploration stage)
@djpaulgibbs is also “trying to make more progress on some kind of many-to-many object relation API. It’s proving pretty challenging. My original approach was to try to port as much of post2posts as possible, but it’s increasingly looking like it’s not a great fit without modifications, so I’m still trying to see where to go with it.”

Inline Documentation (#5940)
@tw2113 is currently documenting BP Core Hooks as scheduled.

Correct the values returned by bp_format_time (#2693)
@johnjamesjacoby has committed patches to resolve the issue. He also noted, “We should probably use smarter time elements and let the front-end handle timestamps in a more sane way.”

Fixes for title-tag /wp_title (#6107)
Full steam ahead and plenty of beer to resolve page/site title issues.

Companion Stylesheets for WP Default themes (#6248)
@hnla reported that he was in the process of building and iterating on the stylesheet for the companion theme tasks.

2015 BuddyPress Survey (#5980)
A friendly reminder to take the survey at https://buddypress.org/2015/02/2015-buddypress-survey/

Daylight Savings Time

Our dev chat is scheduled at 20:00 UTC until after March 29th when DST starts in Europe. For those in North America, this means that dev chats will be held one hour later than usual for the next two weeks at 1:00 P.M. Pacific / 4:00 P.M. Eastern until further notice.

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1426104240000980
(You need a Slack account to view the logs.)

#2693, #5940, #5980, #6107, #6177, #6210, #6248, #6275, #6278, #6290, #dev-chat

Dev Chat Summary for March 4, 2015

BuddyPress 2.2.2

Maintenance release is on the roadmap. This version has 8 bug tickets squashed and 2 remaining tickets in queue.

Notification Meta

#6257 @johnjamesjacoby has some more work to do in ticket and would be calling for testers when it’s ready. He said, “As of now, existing notification query pass all tests. All that’s needed are new tests for the meta itself, similar to other existing meta tests. “

Attachments API

#6278 @im4th has started building an “attachment” tool (mainly dealing with managing uploads) which the avatar/plugins could use to upload files for the first patch. Interesting discussions about usage for this API such as cover photos, blog avatars, favicons, etc.

BP Stylesheets for WP Default Themes

#6248 https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6248 @hnla has been making some notes and will be working on the themes bundled with a new WordPress download: Twenty Fifteen, Twenty Fourteen, and Twenty Thirteen themes. Twenty Twelve theme was included later after almost all of the contributors present revealed that Twenty Twelve is still their favorite WP Default Theme. @im4th awarded the BuddyPress Prize for the Best BuddyPress theme to … Twenty Twelve 🙂

Slack Log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1425499242000291

#6257, #6278, #dev-chat