Six Dot Nine  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Immediate Upgrade, Slow Discovery** - Jonathan enabled 6.9 immediately on his blog and only later explored what's new. - He discovered new blocks like the stretchy paragraph which he hadn't noticed before. Transcript: Jonathan Not really. I pressed the button immediately, so it's been live on my blog since the release. But it took me a little bit to figure out what's new in it. So I've been in process of starting to play with it today. Luke Have you accidentally come across any new features? Jonathan Well, I was looking at some of the blocks and I realized I couldn't tell if some of them were from 6.9 or from prior releases. Like there's this like stretchy paragraph that I've never noticed before. And I'm guessing it's been there for, oh, it is new. Okay. ([Time 0:00:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a4b2cffb-e29d-4c7a-804f-a98c355bde0e)) - **Stretchy Blocks Resize, Not Morph** - Stretchy heading and paragraph scale text to keep it on one line by resizing the font. - Luke proposes variable-width fonts would better achieve a true 'stretchy' effect by changing width rather than size. Transcript: Luke So the current stretchy heading and stretchy paragraph block keeps whatever you type on a single line of text, and then scales the size of the text so that it stays on one single line. So if you just type a single short word, it'll be huge. And if you type a lot, it will be tiny. That's not really stretchy to me. To me, stretchy implies some sort of like distortion or morphing. But imagine if instead you had a fixed height to your text, but a variable width via a variable width font, and then you could keep typing and the text will get thinner and thinner and more Condensed. Wouldn't ([Time 0:01:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/dce6481d-0bfc-46a7-b1bd-7f03c89c8b44)) - **MathML Block For College Algebra** - Jonathan started using the new MathML block as he learns LaTeX and found it handy for algebra examples. - He plans to use it for illustrating college math content on his site. Transcript: Jonathan I was excited about the, there's a new math ml block yes that would have meant very little to me before but i've actually started to use the the notation and discovered that it's actually Quite useful if you're trying to do uh so this prompted me to say okay as maybe as i'm writing about some of my recent college experience with algebra, I could offer illustrations and Actually make use of that block. So how comfortable are you writing latex? Just started learning how to. So I like the idea of it a lot. ([Time 0:02:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5264d6bb-c5ad-4245-93a2-f3f0ed6e2c85)) - **Use Hidden Blocks And Plan Staging** - Use the new hide-block feature for time-limited marketing content since hidden blocks are not output on the front end. - If you need major editorial staging, consider plugins or separate staging environments because core lacks a 'update published as draft' flow. Transcript: Luke There's the ability to hide blocks now, which can be kind of cool. They're not output at all on the front. It's not just a display none. They're actually not output on the front end, but that's, I guess, useful for like marketing sites that have time-limited stuff. But the problem is, Jonathan, the problem has always been since we had, see, we had a solution to this problem back in the customizer days, but we don't have it now, which is that there's No way to update a published post as a draft, if that makes sense. Yes. So if you've got like an about page and then you want to make some changes to the about page, but then you're not finished making those changes and you need to go, what do you do? Or if you want somebody else to give it a read before you, before you publish it, what do you do? Jonathan There's an interesting disconnect here, at least in my experience, with like use cases, because you could argue, I think pretty comfortably, that for your typical blog posts, what You're describing is just not that big of a deal, right? Like you make an update and you put a note there that it was updated or whatever the case is. As a good chunk of folks do if you use wordpress for any sort of serious publishing like workflows and if you've got multiple people involved the typical go-to might have to be like a staging Environments and different wordpress instances and a lot more complexity obviously you have plug-in territory for this like there's plugins to solve this but it's not there's no Yes. Oh, well, there's like the public preview. There's a plugin that's like makes it easy to do a public preview version. So that's a typical thing. But yeah, but okay. I'll check it out. I actually works once it's published though. Luke Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Write in. Tell us if you know. ([Time 0:03:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d96e39b8-6af6-4566-bbc9-3ec854268114)) - **WP Engine's Performance Contributions** - Weston Reuter and WP Engine contributors improved front-end performance in 6.9. - Luke thanks WP Engine and highlights their increased contributions to WordPress core. Transcript: Jonathan My history may be fuzzy. Luke That, of course, was a feature that was developed by Weston Reuter, friend of the show. We've had him on as a guest. And another thing that Weston did in this release was he made some big improvements to the performance, front end performance. So everybody, here's what I want you to do. I want you to give a big round of applause to WP Engine for making every WordPress website a little bit faster. Jonathan Thank you guys for doing that and Weston in particular and there were several other contributors as well that I remember seeing a reference to like there are multiple folks that WP Engine Has focused on WordPress contribution. ([Time 0:05:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4dbca3c1-e17f-4b41-98f2-0b9cc74403c8)) - **Abilities API Demoed With AI Automation** - Austin Ballard demoed a plugin using the Abilities API to let Claude interact with WordPress and create posts. - He used it to auto-find and apply internal and external linking across many posts instantly. Transcript: Luke I haven't had a chance to mess with it directly, but a friend of mine, a friend of the show, even, Austin Ballard, he demoed to me something that he'd been working on. And he created a plugin that basically let him communicate to his WordPress site using Claude. And so we sat there together at a meetup. And I said, all right, well, draft a post for me about this particular topic. And I did it, oh, boring, who cares? It's just AI generated slop. But I was talking in the Claude interface and it actually created the post in WordPress. I didn't have to do any copy paste. That was actually cool. But then I took it further and I said, all right, go through all of my website and look for opportunities to link to other websites oh interesting and so it did it went through the whole Website it was a website about the sunshine coast and said oh we could link to the council we could link to the national parks we could link to this that and the other and it gave a whole list Of suggestions i said yeah apply that and then it updated all of these posts all at once so like wow and then you could do the same for internal links. ([Time 0:09:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a55d4aa3-4ea0-4cea-bb0a-7e52da497806)) - **Don't Compare Closed And Open Source Releases** - Comparing WordPress releases to closed-source ecosystems is the wrong approach because contribution culture differs. - Luke argues the right response to wanting more features is to contribute to the project directly. Transcript: Jonathan One of the things I found myself asking over the past week or so sort of leading up to this is, because I've seen a few references to people comparing like WordPress releases to like other Ecosystems or products. And I think it can be easy to fall into, this is just what we're used to in the way that we do things. So it's like, yeah, that's something I've wondered is like, these things, it feels appropriate, and it's kind of what we're expecting. But are should we be expecting more from releases? Or is this like above our is this like surpassing our expectations? It just, it occurred to me to ask, like how do we assess compared to like what happens in other ecosystems? Like are we doing? Luke I reject the premise. Jonathan That's dumb. Luke If you don't like how much is released in WordPress core, go and contribute and make it happen more. Like that's the whole point of what we do. It's, it's like embedded in the culture of WordPress and open source in general. It's a meritocracy. You don't like it, go in there and improve it. That's, that should be your initial reaction to anything. You should never compare an open source project to something that's closed source. And if you're comparing WordPress to other open source projects, and I mean truly open source with contributor communities, not sort of over the wall open source like Chrono. Sure, sure. Jonathan Then I think WordPress is doing really, really well. Maybe here's a better way to think about this, because I don't think of this as a direct, oh, let's compare and see, like, is what we're doing in WordPress better than what Shopify is doing, Right? Like, that's not how it is. Yeah, or iOS or something. It's more, yes. How do we assess our, is there validity in assessing, like, our own, like, how do we feel like we're doing? Like, it feels like there was more in this release than there was in the previous one like abilities api is a is an important sort of foundational change that we're going to see what comes Of that but like if we were giving ourselves a scorecard like you see the ios uh scorecards that folks will give folks who are watching but like what's the equivalent i i still i like it Luke Because there's a bunch of developer focused features in 6.9 and that might not mean anything to you, right? There might not be any front end or user facing or whatever that might. And to me, it might be fantastic, right? So it depends on who you are, depends on how you use WordPress, depends on whether you're a user or an editor or a builder or whatever. And I think we need to not be trying to triage our tickets based on trying to appease the audience. We should be trying to triage the tickets based on what's best for the project. ([Time 0:10:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/247f8c92-4680-448b-a5eb-8ba25b53d8b4)) - **Developer Scaffolding Enables Innovation** - Developer-focused features like bind controls to external sources set the stage for new plugins and integrations. - What matters from a release depends on whether you're a user, editor, or developer. Transcript: Jonathan It does. But then it brings up like, how do we measure that? And how do we assess what's best for the project? Yeah, you can't. You just can't. Well, so for instance, one of the things in 6.9 here is this, I really liked the release page. It looks quite lovely. Down at the bottom, it says bind controls to external sources. I know enough about that to be like, okay, that in and of itself isn't a bunch of new things, but it's setting the stage for developers to create interesting things based on that. So that to me is an example of something I'd expect the developer to be a lot more excited about than someone just reading that. And it'll be interesting to see what people actually make with it. ([Time 0:13:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2ea1e8dd-a7a3-44f3-8615-c34208d5aa6e)) - **Use And Track Notes For Editorial Context** - Add notes to blocks by right-clicking a block and selecting 'add note' to leave contextual comments. - Consider filing or tracking tickets to add notes to the post list if you need broader visibility. Transcript: Luke Disappointed we didn't quite make it to notes. I have some thoughts on notes. I tried to find it, but I couldn't figure out how to find the notes in a new post. So I'll have to go figure that out. Just right click on a block and hit add note. Simple as that. I have some thoughts around like the fact that they're all based on comments in the back end. And I opened a ticket on track to add notes to the post list table. ([Time 0:14:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/061ceeb1-5b26-4619-958f-719ec6bbaecb))