ryan

All the screenshots in the iMac have now been replaced with PNG-8 versions, except maybe 3 of them that were nearly full screen photos, so they were kept as JPEGs, but with quality=60 rather than quality=10. @breezer Thanks for posting the screenshot. Looks good to me, but I see what @Chris Bennett was talking about with the alignment on buttons and that Segue font. I wonder if there's any way to solve that by targeting it with CSS... guessing not since we'd have to target a particular font, and I don't think there is a CSS selector for that sort of thing.

Actually I think I like this option best, thank you for mentioning it. I like how it looks on the Mac, but have no idea how it looks on Windows and Linux, so that's the only concern. I've switched https://processwire.com/newsite/ to use this font stack. If you guys on Windows and/or Linux have a moment, can you let me know how it looks or take a screenshot and post it? $pw-font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; To view it using the previous font (Krub) just use this link: https://processwire.co/newsite/?font=krub In addition, I have also added some additional font links. These are fonts at Typekit rather than Google fonts: https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=bio-sans https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=supria-sans https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=trade-gothic-next https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=tablet-gothic https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=tablet-gothic-wide https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=adelle-sans https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=benton-sans https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=urw-din Also several other updates just pushed to the development site as well. I'm planning on launching it today, so there's likely to be some other updates as I take care of some more details.

@horst If already working in GD, what's necessary to make it work with the core? Or are you saying the ImageSizerEngineGD in the core already supports it? Admittedly I've not had much experience with webp but interested. Btw, how does the Barlow font version render over there? @jmartsch I enabled permanent scrollbars here and now I'm seeing it. I applied a few adjustments that seem to fix it and will push those updates later today. This is the way it has always worked (it did not change with the new site). However, I really have no idea of anyone is using it or not. I might disable it and see if anyone says "hey what happened?" Thanks I fixed it locally and will push the update later today. I don't immediately know how to implement ESC key here but will revisit it later. I think this is what I was feeling too (with Work Sans), there is kind of a typewriter feel going on. I still like it, but just thinking it's not the right fit here. I like Krub better than any others I've seen so far, but if it's got rendering issues then we'd need to determine if the issue is reproducible beyond Horst's computer, which I'm guessing it is, though have not yet heard any other reports. Barlow then Rubik are the other two that I think could do the job. I don't expect it to work with all links, it's just a quick-n-dirty way for us to see different fonts/colors. But it's not going to be retained as a feature of the site. It looks to me like an iPad, which doesn't speak to a development environment for me. Though maybe people are using them that way, I don't really know. But the goal with the frame was just to give the appearance of looking over the shoulder of someone's development and editing environment. While just a browser frame (or some other OS frame) is kind of what I expect to see here, anonymous, so I'd just tune it out. It lacks context of a dev environment that I think is needed here. It's got to be something that implies we're looking at the whole screen of an actual computer of a web developer, not just a window. I also don't want to show an iPad (or any tablet or phone) because that isn't representative of an dev environment, plus it implies something to do with mobile, which isn't a message we're trying to get across here. While we'll start with the current frame, I also see it as a short term thing. I personally like the current setup but I know it's also subjective. Regardless of subjectivity, I think it communicates what needs to be, and that's what I'm focused on rather than whether people think an iMac is ugly or pretty. But an actual video is the end goal, and this needs no frame. I'd like to replace it with that video Jonathan was working on, once that's at a good point (and if he's open to it).

@Robin S Here's Work Sans: https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=work This is one of those fonts that I do agree with you is very nice, but it seems like it works in some places and not others. I think it's the width combined with some of the details that is giving me trouble, especially at body copy sizes. Or maybe it could be that it's just so different that I'm not used to it. @teppo I am using a retina screens, both on my aging MBP and 27 iMac. However, my eyes are not so good, so I simply can't see anything if I use the scaled down resolutions. ? I have to use the default res (2560x1440 on the iMac). Not seeing the artifacts myself, but I know they are there, as I definitely saw them when I exported them in Photoshop. But the scaling them to 50% down (for hidpi) must have taken care of that. If using screen at native resolution (non-hidpi) I can see how the artifacts would show. I'll try re-exporting these. Making them PNGs doubles the size, but I think that's okay because I'm actually lazy loading these 1-by-1 as they display, so it's not slowing the initial page load. @horst thanks for reporting back on the fonts! Good to know some of them render well. Good to hear about the 110% thing being the cause of the dropdown issue. Though I have no idea how to fix that. I might have to switch up the order so that one of the items without a dropdown displays last.

This is not the case. The blue came from a color picker on the masthead of the current PW site. Though the current site uses a gradient, while the new site does not.

Hey guys, wow, thanks for all the feedback and testing! I’ve pushed an update to the pre-launch staging site that fixes most of the glitches that have been brought up. There were a couple that I wasn’t able to duplicate, so I’ve quoted those below along with more questions. There’s a lot of subjective stuff in this thread as well, which is of course great for conversation, but please don’t feel sad if I don’t implement these suggestions at this stage. The focus now is purely on just making sure that what’s present works as it should (working out any bugs), and not trying to re-do or rewrite anything prior to launch. So if you don’t like the blog or some color or some other part, that’s fine—I hear you and am keeping notes. But I’ve first got to make myself happy with it first before launching it, so that’s where it’s at. Over time I’m sure much will change, and of course all suggestions are appreciated, but for now bug fixes are the focus, and we’ll work on other stuff later. Regarding accessibility stuff, I have implemented several of the suggestions here like some of the items Teppo mentioned. Though should clarify there isn’t a specific goal of tailoring the site for visually impaired people at this stage. I don’t think that’s a large part of our audience at present, and so I want to focus time in the short term towards optimizing towards the traffic that the site will be serving. But please keep these suggestions coming because this is still very useful and we’ll get to more of this soon. One thing that has come up multiple times in this thread has to do with fonts and/or colors. We may very well change the primary color at some point, but not until the Modules, Directory and Forum sites are updated for the new design. The whole point of the current color scheme is to maintain some relation to the existing sites, since it may be weeks before those other ones are updated. But experimenting with colors is still I good idea. You can change the color of the entire site by using a URL with a “?color=<hexcode>” on any URL in the site. Once you do that, the color will be retained on any links you click on, so you can browse the site with your selected primary color. Here’s an example that changes all the blue to the PW pinkish/red color (try not to laugh!): https://processwire.com/newsite/?color=e83561 Replace that e83561 in the URL above with any hex color code to experiment. If you come up with anything you like, paste in the link so we can all see it. Fonts are one thing that we might have to change before launch. As Horst mentioned, the current font renders really poorly on his computer, which means it might be the same for other people (though have not yet had confirmation from anyone else). Plus a couple of you have mentioned you don’t like the font, so I’m open to changing it (though admittedly I really like the current font). I’ve set it up so that you can experiment with different fonts for the site by doing the same thing that you did for the color URL above, but with “font=name”, replacing “name” with the name of the font. It can be any one of these below. The ones near the top are ones I kind of like, though no real order other than that. https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=rubik https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=barlow https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=encode (no italic) https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=khula (no italic) https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=mada (no italic) https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=montserrat https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=nunito https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=palanquin (no italic) https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=raleway https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=source https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=muli https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=fira https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=hindm (no italic) https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=hinds (no italic) https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=ibm https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=lato https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=open https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=roboto https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=sarabun https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=exo2 https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=titillium https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=noto https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=cairo (no italic) https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=saira (no litalic) https://processwire.com/newsite/?font=heebo (no italic) As some of you might now, I got my first new computer since 2013 a little more than a month ago, and it's an iMac 27" (though a used one), so that's kind of why I wanted to get it on the homepage. I know it's not the newest looking computer, etc., but I really wanted something more than just a browser frame. Yes the screenshot jpegs that appear in it a low quality jpegs (quality=10). My eyes aren't so good and I'm not seeing the compression, but sounds like some of you are. I may redo those at a higher quality before launch. Though the way I see it, this whole iMac with screenshots thing is probably temporary anyway. I really like what @Jonathan Lahijani is doing with that video and am thinking that will be a much more useful fit for the homepage longer term. @jmartsch and @gmclelland I can’t seem to duplicate this one (also Chrome). Tried numerous widths, including the narrower width like shown in the screenshot too. That dropdown is always opening to the left for me. The screenshot shows it opening to the right. Just wondering if anyone else is seeing it and if so, do you know of any adjustments that would correct it? @horst This is the biggest concern I’ve come across here, as those fonts definitely look terrible in the screenshot you linked, and we definitely don’t want anyone to see them look like that. Is it an issue with this particular font, or do you observe Google Fonts in general rendering like this? Is this a known issue if you Google around, or is it just something you are observing on your computer? Do any of the new fonts render properly on your computer? Is anyone else seeing them render like this? I’m wondering if the issue is isolated to a particular platform/browser, or what it might be isolated too. So far nobody else has reported this, but if you are seeing it please speak up.

Thanks for all the feedback guys. I've been so busy this week I haven't had a chance to read and respond to it all yet, but will be sure to go through it all this weekend. I appreciate all of your interest. I've gone ahead and uploaded the site to a pre-launch preview location here: https://processwire.com/newsite/

This week I’m glad to report the development progress on the new ProcessWire.com website is ready for preview and I’ve placed it in a subdirectory for testing. You can find it here: https://processwire.com/newsite/ Of course, this is just version 1 of the new site, but it’s now got quite a bit more updated content than the existing site, so I don’t want to wait much longer to replace the existing site. I’m still working out a few small details, but it should be 99% functional. I expect to replace the existing main site early next week. If you have a chance to test it out, please let me know how if you come across anything that isn’t working or any browser/platform specific issues. Thanks for taking a look and testing it out. I’ll have more details next week, along with a new core version on the dev branch with several updates currently in progress. Have a great weekend!

Thanks for all the quotes Horst, Margie and Jmartsch! I have added these into the site. Thank you for all of your feedback and excellent comments/questions. I'm glad you are interested in this, as I love to type about it. ?These are all very subjective things. I've tried to focus on making myself happy with it first. I don't expect everyone to like the same things, as we are all a product of our conditioning, especially as it relates to likes and dislikes of colors, fonts, etc. Even more-so with a global audience. Since I've done the build out this time around, the result is currently consistent with my own conditioned preferences, trying to put my best effort towards that. That's where I have to start. But it won't stay that way and I fully expect design elements (like those you've outlined) to evolve. But because it's all subjective, unless something immediately makes sense to my own understanding, I've got to focus on broad consensus more than individual opinions. That's in part why I want to go ahead and get it online, because it's going to be a lot easier to communicate and collaborate. You are picking things out of the few screenshots I've posted (which is all that can be done right now), but these are just basically thumbnails that lack context. So it's feedback about screenshots rather than an actual site, and I'd like to get to the actual site. The site and the screenshots really aren't the same thing, and the screenshots have a whole different feel than the actual site (for better or worse). For instance, once online, if you think you've found a more suitable typeface, you'll be able to use your browser tools to inspect and change it, take a screenshot and post it, and if it seems pretty unanimous then we'll change it. Other things might take more than just browser tools so I'm also hoping to get it into a site profile. There are other reasons I want to go ahead and get it online. First off, I love the current site, but I also think that for people new to ProcessWire, the current site is starting to look old. I'd become so used to it that I didn't notice until recently. For someone clicking around visiting the sites of the various different CMSs, they likely comparing it to the other CMS sites, all of which look quite a bit newer than ours (I've been visiting them all). We have a great site, but it's a 5-year old site, and I think new visitors see that. I'm guilty of this— I evaluate some product/project/tool or another and don't give a second look to the those that don't subjectively appeal to me with their site. I don't have to love the design aspects of it, but I do have to be convinced that there is quality and that someone cares today, not just yesterday. It has to look relatively new or I just assume the project isn't active, or isn't going to be worthwhile, despite any other factors. Regardless of actual design, that first filter is: "does this look up to date and like someone cares?", because if it doesn't then I'm probably not going to look closer at the product/project. This is of course not very smart, but I've just noticed that's the way my mind seems to work. I'm thinking it might also be the way a lot of us work. So when it comes to the ProcessWire site, my feeling is, the sooner we can get something online that is newer than what's there now (and still accomplishes everything content-wise), the better. I appreciate your perspective and these are good points. Though this is one area where I feel differently. I like what this particular typeface communicates and the way that it does it, though maybe there are others that can do the same. But let me explain. It's precisely those details that draw me to it, because it's just ever so slightly organic. While not apparent at regular body copy sizes, it is in headlines in a few of the letters. It steps outside the expected boundaries every once in awhile, which to me feels like breath of fresh air. Like I hope people perceive PW relative to the others. That little detail of slightly curved strokes on a few of the uppercase letters, when noticed, feels a little like warmth, like the friendliness of ProcessWire, and by that I mean that ProcessWire is more than software, it's community. Anyone can say they are friendly, but ProcessWire actually is. I think it also says something about ProcessWire's API in that it's quality and clear, but it's not just work, it's also something you will enjoy. It's professional first, but there's that slightly warm and organic craftsmanship aspect that goes beyond the hard edges of the cold machine. Lastly, purely side effect, but I do like that some of the strokes slightly curve in an almost wire-like fashion, giving a feel of flexibility over rigidity, which I think is also ProcessWire. But it's primarily the professional while warm aspect that appeals to me. There are all the things I like at least. Maybe there are other typefaces that can do it even better, but I've not found anything that does it quite as well so far. It'd be simpler to accomplish this all with a serif face, but I want the modernity of sans serif without the machine-like coldness, and feel like I found it. I look forward to seeing some other options too, I'm sure they are out there even if I haven't found them. I looked at Molde, and it's attractive but cold, kind of geometric and anonymous, and it's hard not to think of Helvetica, despite there likely being lots of subtle differences. It seems like its strength is in its variations. The condensed version feels like it's starting to relate to PW, except that... it's condensed. ? You might be right, but I think this is one where you'll have to see it in context first, rather than screenshots. I'm well aware that dark text on light background is considered the standard for legibility. So anything that involves paragraphs of text is always on a white background in this site. For pages where the primary emphasis is headlines, links, tiny snippets or copy or images, I'm going with the blue background (which is the same blue that is currently in use on this site). You mentioned intensity but I see calm (maybe it's screen related). Though the intention wasn't really either. It was instead just to have more depth where the content would allow, to show that ProcessWire is not a theme engine and there's a lot of inherent flexibility in how you output content. I wanted to get well beyond the 1-template appearance by having a strong contrast in presentation. To my eyes, it's just as legible as the pages with white backgrounds (and actually, I prefer it for reading, but my eyes have bad floaters so light backgrounds are difficult). But it might be one of those colors that looks great on one screen and not another, so we'll have to see if there's consensus and perhaps fine tune it further. This is an easy answer. The primary audience for the website is web developers (or web designer/developers). The secondary audience is the actual clients that hire web developers, whether that be owners, marketing people, designers, etc. So from a marketing aspect, the purpose of the site is first to get the web developers on board, and second to tell the clients that: not only are they going to love the system, but that it's an exceptionally secure, reliable, safe and really easy-to-use system that will put them a step ahead of their peers. I feel like our old/current homepage only speaks a little bit to these groups and that it's too general and abstract in wording. The new homepage is quite a bit more specific about these two groups. I just need to figure out that darn iMac screenshot, as ProcessWire isn't some tangible thing/object that you show. But I just need a screenshot to show that is compelling enough to capture your eye and make you want to start reading what's on the rest of the page. I have not yet figured out how to show this in a screenshot. ProcessWire is definitely an enterprise tool, but I'm not really interested in spending energy targeting this "enterprise" segment. Several CMS seem to target this, lose the interest of everyone else, and meanwhile the enterprise segment goes off and mostly uses WordPress. ? To a large extent, the enterprise segment listens to their web agencies or in house web designers and developers. I feel that if you are attracting the web design/development community, then you are also attracting the enterprise segment better than you can do directly. The types of users currently working with PW are almost exclusively web developers, and related web design/development agencies. This much is pretty clear. I completely agree that PW is not reaching this audience as well as it could. This really is a primary motivation for rebuilding the site. Also completely agree. And they have come to the right place, but few realize it. That's the challenge to solve. I feel like the new homepage gets quite a bit closer to communicating this, but also think really nailing it perfectly is going to take getting a professional designer involved before it's a home run. However, I think next week when it launches, it'll be a step closer to where it needs to be. Some good momentum to get things going to the next steps hopefully. I largely agree with everything here. I've spent a lot of time writing copy this last week and this sounds consistent with what I've been after. Though I don't think marketing can really be unopinionated per se, because the purpose is to get you to buy into something. For instance, I might say that ProcessWire has the best API, and I really believe it, but such a statement can only ever be an opinion.

I hope that you all had a great Christmas holiday (or other holiday that was last week). And likewise hope that you have a Happy New Year this upcoming week. This week we'll take a quick look at last week's new master version launch and then discuss the status of the new ProcesssWire.com website currently in development: https://processwire.com/blog/posts/rebuilding-the-pw-site-5/

Happy Holidays! This latest master version of ProcessWire contains hundreds of new additions, fixes, optimizations and more. This post covers all the highlights— https://processwire.com/blog/posts/pw-3.0.123-master/

Last week's version 3.0.121 was the first release candidate for our next master version. Several issue reports were covered this week for minor things, and they are all included in this week's dev branch version 3.0.122. Please consider this version the RC2 (release candidate 2) for our next master. There's nothing major to report, but if you'd like to see the list of changes relative to last week's version, please see the dev branch commit log at: https://github.com/processwire/processwire/commits/dev If you have a chance, please upgrade to version 3.0.122 and let us know if you run into any issues. Thus far things are going smoothly and it seems like we are very close to the next master version, perhaps as soon as next week. Since I don't have much more to report than the above, we'll skip doing a blog post this week. But after last week's post, a couple of people asked me about ProMailer (as mentioned, which we use for the weekly email distribution), so I'll be sure to write more on that soon. Attached is a screenshot from the message editor screen that reveals several aspects of the message sending part at least. Thanks for reading and I hope that you all have a great weekend!

@Robin S I don't think there is any particular way to know sort of manual analysis (looking to see what you are currently using). I suppose a crawler or creative find() could be coded up to find all the image sizes currently used on a site, but that's maybe more time and trouble than potential benefit. Though you did just give me the idea that perhaps I could have this module perform a find() on fields like "body" to see if any <img> references to each variation exists, before it matches it. That would be relatively simple. But I think where this tool comes in the most handy is when you are making a change to the dimensions in some Pageimage::size() calls, and you want to clear out the old variations that you know are no longer needed. For instance, I knew very clearly what image sizes I could clear out of the sites directory because I was aware of the dimension change I was making in the code. Of course, if it turns out that some automatically generated image variations were still being used, then PW would just re-create them. Where you'd have to be more careful is with manually-generated variations like custom crops or sizes in a CKEditor field. You can exclude these automatically by using the exclude suffix option, though I'd always recommend using the "dry run" option to see what it's going to delete, before you let it actually delete them.

The RC1 version for our next master release is here. This post covers all the details and information about how you can help. We also look at a a new PageAction module added to ListerPro, and a couple of other new modules currently in development: https://processwire.com/blog/posts/processwire-3.0.121-core-updates-and-more/

Thanks for the feedback. It's a little tricky to demo the site as screenshots as it really changes it from an interactive interface to a static image. Looking at the screenshots is kind of like looking at pictures of a house as opposed to walking around in it. It changes the scale completely to one that doesn't happen interactively, so definitely gives a different vibe than actually using it in the browser. But I'm also not one to go off and disappear for weeks at a time, so want to share what I've got every week, even if the viewing context isn't quite right. Per the earlier posts about the site, I'm not trying to create anything graphically too divergent from what we've got already, just trying to evolve it to the next step, and hopefully a platform/foundation for some of the things you've mentioned, and potentially other people that know how to get there. So I'm a lot more focused on the development side (backend and front-end) than the design side, though also trying to get just enough design going to accommodate the content and various responsive layouts that it displays in. At the same time, I don't want something that's purely a mock-up or placeholder either, because I think phase 1 is replacing the current site and immediately after phase 2 is revisiting the design to make it more visually distinct (which is where we need the designers in the community), then phase 3 updating the Module and Directory sites to be consistent with all of it. I do like additional graphics like you mentioned with those examples, though I don't think some of those approaches (Ora, Statamic, Laracasts) are practical for us. Someone has to create those illustrations. I'm not an illustrator, and I don't think I can hire one every time I want to write a new blog post, add a new module, or add a new tutorial. So I don't feel like this level of graphics/illustration is practical or realistic for the PW site and we instead have to work with what we've got. The only real dynamic visual elements we have to work with are the screenshots submitted to the sites directory. But what might be practical is to have some visual elements/illustrations in the marketing side of the site, where we won't be constantly needing new graphics every week. But if there are visual elements we can add that really help to communicate the message then that's ideal. This will especially be the case with the homepage, which is something i'm not sure I'll even attempt a layout for, but may need a lot of help when it comes to that.

This week ProcessWire 3.0.120 is on the dev branch. This post takes a look at updates for this version and talks about our work towards the next master version. In addition, we take a look at some more updates and screenshots for the new ProcessWire.com website: https://processwire.com/blog/posts/processwire-3.0.120-and-more-new-site-updates/

This week is the Thanksgiving holidays here in the US and it’s one of those weeks where there’s no school for the kids, so it’s a little hard to get work done. I don’t have any major core updates to report this week, so I’m not going to bump the version number up today. However, look for a new dev branch version next week. We will also release a new master version before the end of the year… sometime within the next month. Before releasing the new master version, I’m primarily interested in resolving any issues present in the current dev branch that are not present on the current master branch. Meaning, issues that have arisen due to some recent change only on the dev branch (if there are any). So if you are aware of any issues experienced on the dev version that are not on the master, please let me know. Thanks for your help in testing. Even though it’s been a vacation week, I’ve been waking up early every morning to work on the new PW website. Lots of continuing progress, and I should have another update on that next week along with a new dev branch version of the core. Thanks for all the feedback from last week’s post. Among other things, I caught that folks don’t like the skyscrapers anymore (as a visual element), so I’ve taken them out and agree it’s better without them. I’ll have some updated screenshots next week. Off topic, but was so excited I had to tell someone. I got a computer upgrade this week after 4 or so years of working off the same laptop. A few keys on my laptop keyboard recently stopped working (letters in the word “ProcessWire” — I wore them out), so I’ve been using an external keyboard plugged in. That’s been working alright, but made it hard to see the screen since I can’t sit as close with an external keyboard in front of the laptop. It was getting a little tiresome to work on, the keyboard wasn't repairable without rebuilding the whole laptop (costly), and it was basically time for an upgrade, but computers are expensive and I was resigned to waiting another year. Over these Thanksgiving holidays I found out a family member had bought an iMac a year or so ago and didn’t like it, so they were going back to a PC. I said, “hey why don’t you sell that iMac to me?” We came to an agreement. Now I've got it here and am moving my development environment over to this newer computer, and have been working off it for a couple of days and loving every minute of it. It's going to help out a lot with developing ProcessWire.

This week we take a look at what's new in ProcessWire 3.0.119 and then we finish up by taking a look at a few screenshots from the new ProcessWire development website. If you read my post last week in the forum, you may already be familiar with some of these updates, but we'll cover them in a little more detail here: https://processwire.com/blog/posts/processwire-3.0.119-and-new-site-updates/

Most of what I've been working on this week is related to the new PW website. That's includes primarily continued copy writing and site development (about 50/50), and it's coming along very well, though a lot of work. I'm hoping to have it ready to post publicly for collaboration by the end of the year. I'll have screenshots to share well before that though. The content of the site (particularly documentation section) is so much improved from the current site that I'd like to get it online as soon as possible, even if design details and some features are still being worked on. In addition to continued work in the documentation section, this week I also worked on the sites directory. I'm going to keep working on that today rather than writing a longer blog post, so that's why I'm posting this update here in the forum instead. Next week I'll also have ProcessWire 3.0.119 ready. Though you can grab the current dev branch already to benefit from a couple of features that are already in it. These include two items from the processwire-requests GitHub repository, among some other minor updates. Here's a preview from next week's blog post about a couple of new features in 3.0.119: • Robin S. (@Toutouwai) suggested that collapsed file/image and CKEditor fields automatically open when a file is dragged into them. Toutouwai also wrote the code to make it happen. This addition is super convenient, and it works great. • @BitPoet suggested that our ajax file upload capture and write the uploaded file in ~8 megabyte chunks. This is preferable to loading all the file data into memory and then writing it, enabling it to support larger file uploads that might not have been possible before (depending on server memory). Presumably this also can help to reduce server load. Thanks to BitPoet for writing the code to make it happen. Also on the dev branch this week is a new WireArray::slices() method and support for created/modified page dates in pages export/import functions (I needed this to import the PW sites directory entries). I'll have more details on all of these updates and more, next week.

Yes, we should have one hopefully this month.

There has been no change here, the WireArray::new() method remains as it was before. It was only the non-static implementation that was removed, which was present not for functional reasons, but purely so that it would show up in the auto-generated API docs to represent the static version. That non-static version was causing issues in PHP versions prior to 7.x. The static version does not cause issues because it's implemented via PHP's __callStatic() handler. While there are WireArray() and PageArray() functions that can be used the the same way as WireArray::new() and PageArray::new(), the ::new() versions are preferable because they will work with any WireArray derived type, and as a bonus, they can also accept variable argument lists.

This week, ProcessWire 3.0.118 contains several updates and this post covers them all. The most significant update is a useful new addition for viewing and manipulating page redirects, right from the page editor: https://processwire.com/blog/posts/processwire-3.0.118-core-updates/

Continuing work on the new ProcessWire.com, this week we discuss the documentation section of new site as more progress is made: https://processwire.com/blog/posts/rebuilding-pw-website-part2/

Work continues on the new processwire.com website, while the core received several updates including support for Markup Regions "pw-optional" attributes, upgrades to WireArray that make it a lot more useful, and more. https://processwire.com/blog/posts/processwire-3.0.117-core-updates/

My interest in using Uikit for this particular site is largely for the collaborative aspect. Having a common, already-known, well documented and tested framework for the front-end just seems better for collaboration here. I know a lot of people here are already familiar with it as well. There's also the aspect of being able to develop the site without necessarily knowing the final look of it. Uikit is designed for this kind of prototyping and gives us a result that can be tailored using already known/documented means (collaboration again). That there's a lot of crossover between Uikit's components and what we will need for this site is also helpful, and will no doubt save time. The current site was also a collaborative one, but it didn't use a framework. Instead it used various strategies that may be quite good and efficient, but I've never understood as well as I would have liked. So when it comes to making updates on the code side, I feel like I'm working around things rather than with them. Since I've got to ultimately maintain the site for the long term, I like having the familiarity and consistency of an established and documented framework behind it. In the context of the ProcessWire site, these aspects are more important to me than size of the eventual css files. If I was developing a different site the considerations might be different—I might still use Uikit, or I might go a different route, or go sans framework, all depending on the context and needs of the site. So I'm not suggesting that everyone should be using Uikit, just suggesting it seems like a good fit for this particular project, as it has been for some others.