Free PHPFree PHP scripts classes and info

The Month in WordPress: February 2020

February 2020 was a busy month in the WordPress project! Most notably, there was an outpouring of sentiment in response to the unfortunate cancellation of WordCamp Asia. However, the team continues to work hard in the hopes of making WordCamp Asia 2021 happen. In addition, there were a number of releases and some exciting new news during the month of February. Read on for more information!

WordCamp Asia 2020 Cancelled & Pop-up Livestream

There was a ton of excitement around WordCamp Asia, not to mention all the effort from organizers, speakers, sponsors and volunteers. Unfortunately, on February 12th, WordCamp Asia was cancelled due to concern and uncertainty around COVID-19. Since then, the organizing team has worked to refund tickets and to support hotel and air refunds. In addition, a pop-up livestream featuring some WordCamp Asia speakers and a Fireside Chat and Q&A with Matt Mullenweg took place on February 22nd.

For a personal take on the cancellation of WordCamp Asia, read this post from Naoko Takano, the global lead organizer. Many thanks to the volunteers who worked hard to deliver WordCamp Asia. They’ve not only handled logistics associated with cancellation but have also announced that they’ve started working on WordCamp Asia 2021 with some January dates in mind! To get the latest on WordCamp Asia, subscribe to updates here. 

WordPress 5.4 Beta is Now Available

WordPress 5.4 Beta 1 was released on February 11 and quickly followed by Beta 2 on February 18 and Beta 3 on February 25. These two releases get us closer to our primary goal for 2020: full-site editing with blocks. WordPress 5.4 will merge ten releases of the Gutenberg plugin and is scheduled to be released on March 31, 2020. It will come with many new features, such as two new blocks for social links and buttons, and easier navigation in the block breadcrumbs. There are also a number of accessibility improvements, such as easier multi-block selection and easier tabbing, one of the editor’s biggest accessibility issues. 5.4 will also include many developer-focused changes, such as improved favicon handling and many new hooks and filters.

Want to get involved in building WordPress? There are a number of ways to help right now! If you speak a language other than English, help us translate WordPress. Found a bug? Post it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. You can also help us test the current beta by installing the WordPress Beta Tester plugin. Just remember that the software is still in development, so we recommend against running it on a production site. 

WordCamp Centroamérica is Looking for Speakers and Sponsors!

WordCamp Centroamérica is the first regional WordCamp for Central America and will be held on September 17-19, 2020, in Managua, Nicaragua. The Call for Speakers and Call for Sponsors are now open, so if you’re interested in speaking at or sponsoring WordCamp Centroamérica, now is your chance! To learn more about the eent, visit and subscribe to updates on their website, or follow their Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts.  

Want to get involved in the Community team and help make more amazing WordCamps happen? Follow the blog and join the #community-events channel in the Making WordPress Slack group! You can also find out about other upcoming WordCamps here.

Contribute to WordPress Core via GitHub

An experimental feature has been added to Trac to help improve collaboration between Trac and GitHub. This feature allows contributors to link GitHub pull requests opened against the official WordPress Develop Git mirror to tickets, which will make GitHub contributions more visible in the related Trac ticket. To learn all the details and to see how it works, read this post.

Gutenberg Development Continues

There are many new exciting additions to Gutenberg! On February 5, Gutenberg 7.4 saw two new features added, including background color support to the Columns block and text color support for the Group block. Many enhancements were made, including a number of improvements to the Navigation Block.

Gutenberg 7.5 was released on February 12, with 7.6 following on February 27. They introduced even more features, including the Social Links block as a stable block and a number of additional blocks for full-site editing, not to mention the many enhancements, new APIs, bug fixes, documentation, and updates.

Want to get involved in building Gutenberg? Follow the Core team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

Further Reading:

• Aside from WordCamp Asia, two other WordCamps have been postponed due to COVID-19: WordCamp Retreat Soltau and WordCamp Genève. News about further postponements or cancellations will be posted on the WordCamp Central blog.
• Automatic updates for themes and plugins are being planned for inclusion in WordPress 5.5.
• Version 2.2.1 of the WordPress Coding Standards has been released.
• The Community Team has selected new team representatives for 2020.
• The Core team published a useful refresher on what it means to be a component maintainer, along with some tips and best practices.
• The Support Team has announced some amendments to their guidelines for linking to external resources when using the support forums.
• The WordPress Foundation has published financial information regarding their charitable donations from 2019.
• The Core XML Sitemaps project kicked off with their first meeting this month.
• The Gutenberg team have created a new @wordpress/create-block package for scaffolding new blocks.

Have a story that we should include in the next “Month in WordPress” post? Please submit it here.

Examples of Combining Halftone Effects with Code

Halftone patterns, those intensely-dotted images, are a mainstay of both print and web design. While traditionally used as a means of faithfully reproducing images in print, it has also become a style all its own.

Today, halftone patterns are used as backgrounds or to provide some surreal special effects to images. And, as CSS and JavaScript have progressed, designers have found a way to integrate the effect into code as well. The results can be stunning.

Let’s have a look at some examples of how halftone is being implemented through code. As you’ll see, there are a number of different takes and techniques for bringing this classic pattern to the web.

The Web Designer Toolbox

Unlimited Downloads: 1,000,000+ Web Templates, Themes, Plugins, Design Assets, and much more!

Boro HTML Template

HTML Templates

Minilam Newsletter

Email Templates

Adminto Dashboard

Admin Templates

MiniMag Magazine Theme

WordPress Themes

Mobile Menu Plugin

WordPress Plugins

Laptop & App Mockups

Mockup Templates

Start Downloading Now!

Halftone Your Cat (Or Non-Cat) Photo

This is probably the most familiar implementation of halftone. It consists of adding the effect to an existing photograph (a cat, in this case). But this snippet is also fully customizable. You can replace dots with, for example, emoji or text. In addition, you can change the sizing of each dot. And, yes, you can swap the cat with a face – but why?

See the Pen
Halftone by ycw

Press for Halftone

Here’s a very creative use for halftone. There’s a subtle pattern displayed on this button, with a slightly bolder hover effect. But clicking will turn on a high-contrast pattern that is sure to grab your attention.

See the Pen
Halftone button by Taylor Hunt

Revealing Secrets

The flashlight effect has become quite popular in recent times. Here, it’s combined with a halftone pattern that “illuminates” hidden text. It’s a fun interaction, and the pattern brings a bit of retro/brutalist vibe.

See the Pen
Reveal Hidden Text by Tyler Durrett

Taking a Subtler Tone

There’s no law that says halftone has to be loud – and this snippet is proof. Halftone effects are blended perfectly into a crosshatch pattern. The result is something both unique and subtle. Bonus points for being built with pure CSS.

See the Pen
Half Tone Cross Hatch Pattern by Devin Price

Far-Out Hover Effects

Here’s a snippet that looks like something from a sci-fi thriller. A blue on black halftone photo stares at us from the other side of the screen. Place your cursor over it and a portion of the image fades back into obscurity.

See the Pen
Halftone Aberration by Théo Gil

Parallax Sans BS

Another surreal take on the effect, this photo features a dizzying array of colored dots. What’s more, moving your cursor brings a 3D parallax effect that exposes a subtle outline floating above the main image. The added dimension makes the effect all the more interesting.

See the Pen
Parallax Halftone by Eric Jackson Wood

Duo It All

Thanks to CSS blend modes, halftone effects can be added to just about anything. In this example, a beautiful blend is placed on top of various photos. Hovering over one reveals its true color. It’s a very practical use that is compelling, but without being over-the-top.

See the Pen
CSS Blend modes by Jos van Weesel

More Than Your Average Text Shadow

Let’s finish things off with another practical use case. Here we have some basic outlined typography that utilizes offset shadowing. The first two examples use a solid color shadow, which works well. But the second set features a halftone pattern, which offers a more artsy feel.

See the Pen
Strokes, Shadows + Halftone Effects by Mark

A Pattern of Innovation

The great thing about combining code with a classic image effect is that it opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Sure, we can add a halftone pattern to a design element – but why stop there?

Designers are finding new and clever uses for these effects. In the code snippets above, halftone is utilized both traditionally and innovatively. The old boundaries only exist if we want them to.

Want to see more halftone pattern examples? Check out our CodePen collection for other creative uses.

The post Examples of Combining Halftone Effects with Code appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.