WordPress 4.9.9 Minor Release Roadmap: Site Health Project, Gutenberg Preparation and more

WordPress 4.9.9 Minor Release Roadmap: Site Health Project, Gutenberg Preparation and more.

The WordPress 4.9.9 release leads published a minor roadmap for the release of WordPress 4.9.9 yesterday. WordPress 4.9.9 will be led by Anthony Burchell and Alain Schlesser. The minor release is targeted for 5th November 2018, with the first beta arriving near the end of October.

The version 4.9.9 will carry several updates which include four key focus areas: Accessibility, Internationalization, the Site Health Project, and Gutenberg preparation.

Accessibility

Any specific accessibility items about the release of WordPress 4.9.9 wasn’t clarified in the Roadmap. As per Anthony Burchell, “the leads see lots of ways they can drastically improve the experience for a lot of people with minimal effort”.

Internationalization

The Internationalization focus is aimed at improving translations which ensure the date/time values work and RTL is supported.

Site Health Project

Contributors to the Site Health Project, previously known by the code name ‘Servehappy’ will be working on resolving issues that will allow users to stay on WordPress 4.9.9 while they prepare for 5.0 and will still have access to the information about how to update their PHP versions.

WSOD protection, update dashboard notice, plugin version requirements are the Servehappy components that are pending to be collected. Anthony Burchell stated, “The reason for this focus is because, when 5.0 ships, users who decide not to upgrade will be on 4.9.9 for a potentially extended time period. If we don’t have these Servehappy components included in 4.9.9, getting rid of old PHP versions will only happen after 5.0.”

Gutenberg

The WordPress 4.9.9 release leads also focused on the landing items that lay the groundwork for anything necessary for Gutenberg’s merge into 5.0. The items identified includes:

The making of WordPress 4.9.9 is still in its development phase. And WordPress 5.0 is likely to arrive before the end of 2018.

 

Reference: WP Tavern, WordPress Blog

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