WP Builds Newsletter #37 – Gutenberg accessibility updates, PHP 5 dead and Red Hat bought

This weeks WordPress news – Covering The Week Commencing 29th October 2018:

WordPress 5.0 Beta 2
WordPress 5.0 Beta 2 is now available! Amendments to… Block Editor, Internationalisation, Twenty Nineteen Theme and The REST API.

WordPress 5.0 Beta 1
A quite interesting real time look at someone using Gutenberg for the first time. A stream of consciousness of how it goes!

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Report on the Accessibility Status of Gutenberg
"On October 3rd, the schedule for WordPress 5.0 was proposed. Prior to this, the accessibility team had not been made aware of a release time frame, and had no reason to believe WordPress 5.0 and the Gutenberg editor were under time pressure. The schedule proposed a release date of November 19th – 6 weeks from the announcement date…"

Accessibility in Gutenberg is not a one-more feature
"Joe Dolson, one of the WordPress Accessibility team reps posted a letter on make/accessibility this afternoon that really struck a chord with me. In detail, the letter outlines the Accessibility team's perceived shortcomings of Gutenberg. the new block editor set to ship in a few weeks with WordPress 5.0…"

WordPress – Quarterly Updates | Q3 2018
"To keep everyone aware of big projects and efforts across WordPress contributor teams, I’ve reached out to each team’s listed representatives. I asked each of them to share their Top Priority (and when they hope for it to be completed), as well as their biggest Wins and Worries. Have questions? I’ve included a link to each team’s site in the headings…"

Lessons from Gutenberg
"WordPress 5.0 is on the horizon. Yes, we’ve been saying it for months. But now we really are on the brink of its full release. The journey to get to this point has been quite a wild ride. During the buildup, we’ve heard just about every argument for and against the new Gutenberg editor. And we’ve had loads of controversy (which hasn’t stopped, by the way) about one thing or another. Some people aren’t happy with process for storing data, while others think the whole concept is flawed. Then, there are all of those pre-release negative reviews. In all, it’s a lot for both web designers and users to digest…"

Gutenberg Cloud Plugin for WordPress is Now in Beta
"Frontkom, the team behind the Gutenberg Cloud project, has published the beta version of its WordPress plugin to the official repository. Cloud Blocks serves as a connector, allowing WordPress users to browse and install open source blocks from Gutenberg Cloud. The blocks are hosted on NPM and their assets are served from CloudFlare using unpkg.com…"

Using PHP 5 Becomes Dangerous in 2 Months
"WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and many other popular website CMSs were written in a programming language called PHP. PHP version 5 is about to reach end-of-life and will stop receiving security updates in two months. Many WordPress and other PHP websites remain on version 5.6 or older. Once support for PHP 5 ends in two months, these sites are in a precarious position and will become exploitable as new PHP 5 vulnerabilities emerge without security updates…"

A Look at We’ve Got Your Back by Freemius
"As someone who continues to participate in the WordPress economy, specifically in developing custom solutions for others, and as someone with many friends and acquaintances who are also developers, I know that one of the hardest things that we can do (aside from naming things) is branding and marketing a product or business. I’ve written about Freemius a few times in the past (with the most visited post being All About Freemius for WordPress)…"

Introducing Toolset’s communication system for professional listing sites
"It is important to provide clients and contractors of your professional listing sites with an easy way to communicate. That’s why Toolset has created a new communication system which provides users with an immediate way to chat with contractors in a seamless conversation. It means that jobs can be agreed in a faster time than ever using a messaging interface which will be familiar to people around the world…"

Non WordPress, but useful anyway…

Google’s reCAPTCHA v3 Promises a “Frictionless User Experience”
"Google introduced reCAPTCHA v3 this week, which promises a new “frictionless user experience.” Earlier versions of the API stopped bots but also drew the ire of internet users across the globe. Users were regularly inconvenienced with distorted text challenges, street sign puzzles, click requirements, and other actions to prove their humanity…"

IBM Will Acquire Open-Source Software Company Red Hat In $34 Billion Deal
"In what may be the most significant tech acquisition of the year, IBM says it will acquire open-source software company Red Hat for approximately $34 billion. Under the terms of the deal announced Sunday, IBM will acquire Red Hat for $190 a share — a premium of more than 60 percent over Red Hat's closing price of $116.68 on Friday…"