EDITS.WS

Author: Sarah Gooding

  • UK Publishers File £13.6 Billion Lawsuit Against Google Alleging Market Abuse

    A group of 130,000 businesses publishing around 1,750,000 websites and applications in the UK have filed a lawsuit against Google and its parent company, Alphabet. The claim is being managed by law firms Humphries Kerstetter and Geradin Partners, who allege that “Google abused its dominant position in the market for online advertising, earning super-profits for itself at the expense of the tens of thousands of publishers of websites and mobile apps in the UK.”

    The firms’ economic analysis of Google’s alleged anti-competitive behavior suggests that some companies may have had advertising revenues reduced by 40%. Although Google has been the subject of multiple regulatory investigations in the EU, UK, and USA, resulting in a €220m fine from French competition authorities, this claim aims to compensate publishers and recover losses through a competition class action lawsuit.

    A statement published by Humphries Kerstetter details the focus of their investigations:

    These competition investigations all focus on the same core facts. Google dominates the markets for ad tech services in the UK and across the world controlling up to 90% of the market in certain sectors. This allows Google to dictate terms, control pricing and, in some scenarios, enables it to favour its own platforms in the process by which advertisements are selected to be published.

    The allegations of the competition claim are similar to the complaint brought by the US Department of Justice that alleges Google used AMP to impede header bidding and throttle the load time of non-AMP ads.

    “The marketplace for online advertising is sophisticated, technical and highly automated,” Claudio Pollack, who is heading the UK publishers’ competition claim, said. “Advertising is sold in a fraction of a second in a process which is designed to match the product being advertised with the profile of an individual visiting a website. Third party platforms operate on both sides of the marketplace matching supply with demand and – in an ideal world – ensuring the market operates efficiently and effectively. Unfortunately, it is now well established that this market has developed in a way that is primarily serving Google.”

    A separate multi-billion Euro claim will be running in parallel in the EU, handled by a Dutch law firm in cooperation with Geradin Partners. They are seeking compensation for the alleged damage to small, local publishers who have struggled to stay afloat amid decreased advertising revenue.

    “While the value of the claim we are bringing is substantial, we believe this matter is about much more than money,” Geradin Partners founding partner Professor Geradin said. “For years Google has been denying companies in the UK and Europe and beyond, including the local press and the publishers of community focused websites, the chance to earn a proper income by way of advertising. As well as bringing Google to account the parties who have lost out need proper compensation, something a CAT claim can achieve at no cost to those parties.”

  • Take the 2022 WordPress Survey

    The 2022 WordPress Survey is now open to anyone using WordPress – from beginners to professional developers and everyone in between. This annual survey helps project leaders and contributors learn more about how and why the software is being used.

    This year’s survey is available in the seven most frequently installed languages based on the number of WordPress downloads, including French, German,  Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish.

    The survey begins with some questions about basic demographics and moves on to a mix of interesting questions that fall more under the topic of market research than previous years. It asks why you use WordPress instead of other tools/platforms, what you think are the most essential three plugins when building sites, and what are the best and most frustrating things about WordPress. The survey also asks whether respondents have used blocks in the new Site Editor and which Site Editor they prefer. It will be interesting to see the data from these questions.

    The last eight questions are for contributors, and even with those it takes less than five minutes to complete. Although some information from the 2022 survey may be shared in the annual State of the Word address, the survey will be open through the end of 2022.

    The analysis from the 2021 survey results will be shared in early 2023 and WordPress will publish the 2022 results sometime next year.

  • Two New WordPress Plugins Improve Block Editor Accessibility and WCAG Compliance

    WordPress Core Committer Jb Audras, CTO of the France-based Whodunit agency, has released two new accessibility plugins in cooperation with Guillaume Turpin, another developer on the Whodunit team. These are small “micro” plugins developed to fill gaps in the block editor’s accessible content creation experience.

    The first plugin is called Lang Attribute for the Block Editor and is important for content that is written in multiple languages. It allows content creators to indicate language changes using the lang attribute so that those using assistive technologies will get the correct presentation and pronunciation rules for the specified language. This plugin helps WordPress sites meet the requirements of the WCAG Success Criterion 3.1.2 “Language of Parts.”

    video source: Jb Audras

    With the plugin installed, content creators can highlight text and then find the language attribute in the block toolbar to edit it.

    “It’s worth noting that indicating language changes in content is mandatory for WCAG compliance, and there is currently no way to do that in the Block Editor (except by editing the code manually),” Audras said when introducing the plugin on Twitter. “I think this feature should be implemented natively into Gutenberg.”

    The second micro plugin is called Abbreviation Button for the Block Editor, which allows content authors to include definitions for abbreviations using the <abbr> HTML element. This enables site visitors to access the expanded form of abbreviations, as outlined by WCAG success criterion 3.1.4 “Abbreviations.”

    The WCAG identify a few types of visitors who may be helped by the Abbreviations, including those who have difficulty decoding words, those who rely on screen magnifiers, have a limited memory, and those who have difficulty using context to aid understanding.

    video source: Jb Audras

    The abbreviation tag can also be found in the block toolbar, so users can highlight any text for which they want to provide the expanded form of the abbreviation.

    Both the Abbreviation Button and the Language Attribute plugins are available for free in the WordPress plugins directory. The plugins’ creators hope that some of this functionality can eventually be added to the block editor, but in the meantime users can install the plugins to create more accessible content that meets accessibility guidelines.

  • ElasticPress 4.4.0 Adds New Status Report Page and Instant Results Template Customization

    10up has released version 4.4.0 of ElasticPress, its enhanced search plugin that speeds up searching while reducing the load on WordPress sites. The plugin is based on Elasticsearch and is used by customers of the ElasticPress.io service (a SaaS solution), as well as those who are hosting their own Elasticsearch instance.

    This update adds a new “Status Report” page in the dashboard with information that can be helpful for troubleshooting ElasticPress and synced content. The UI uses Gutenberg components for the collapsible sections. Version 4.4.0 introduces a new query logger functionality that stores failed queries (up to 5 in the last 24 hours) and displays an admin notice if failed queries are detected. The failed queries are displayed on the new Status Report page.

    Another highlight of this release is the ability to customize the template for Instant Results. It gives developers a JavaScript hook for replacing the component used to render search results in Instant Results. The Instant Results feature was introduced in March with limited customization capabilities. It added a new search modal over the page content that inherits the site’s styles. Developers could adjust the appearance and expose facets, but this new update gives them control over the whole template.

    Another small but useful update in this release is the ability to exclude a specific post from Search. This helps site owners further customize the search experience to deliver only the intended results.

    Developers who are using the plugin should take note of the announcement included in this release regarding the migration of the Users feature to the ElasticPress Labs plugin, which houses more experimental features:

    Note that starting from the ElasticPress 5.0.0 release the Users feature will be moved to the ElasticPress Labs plugin. The Terms and Comments features will remain in ElasticPress but will be available only if enabled via code.

    Check out the full list of updates and bug fixes on GitHub in the changelog for 4.4.0.

  • WordPress Versions 3.7-4.0 No Longer Get Security Updates

    In September, WordPress’ Security Team announced it would be dropping support for versions 3.7 through 4.0 by December 1, 2022. Yesterday the final releases for these versions (3.7.41, 3.8.41, 3.9.40, and 4.0.38) were made available to the very small percentage of users who are running ancient versions of WordPress.

    As part of the final releases, the upgrade notification now informs users that they are on a version that is no longer receiving security updates. This affects fewer than 1% of total installs. The vast majority of WordPress sites are running 4.1 or later and will continue receiving security updates.

    Wherever possible, WordPress users should be running 6.1.1 on PHP 8 or later. (Although PHP 7.4 is the minimum version required to use WordPress, PHP 7.4 reached end of life two days ago and will no longer be receiving security updates. Version 8.0 will reach EOL in 11 months.)

    Now that the Security Team is no longer obligated to backport security updates to very old versions, it frees up their time to better support newer versions of WordPress.

  • Gutenberg 14.6 Adds List View for Editing Navigation Block, Introduces New Automatic Color Palette Generator

    Gutenberg 14.6 was released last week with a long list of small but impactful refinements to core blocks and the full-site editing experience. One of the most practical enhancements included in this update is the new list view for editing the Navigation block.

    Gutenberg contributor Fabian Kägy published a quick video that helps to visualize the changes:

    The list view makes it easy for users to reorder navigation items using a drag-and-drop UI. The Navigation block in the content area instantly previews items that are moved in the block inspector.

    As part of a larger effort to make it easier to edit Navigation Links off the canvas, this release also adds a new URL field to the Navigation Link inspector controls. Now user can edit the URL from the inspector controls as well as from the main link control.

    image credit: PR 45751

    Version 14.6 also adds a variation picker to the Group block placeholder. When users insert a new Group block, it will now allow them to select from among different variations to set the layout for the block. This makes it significantly easier for users to get started when using a Group block, instead of having to fiddle around to manually assign the desired layout.

    One of the most creative features introduced in this release is the new “Randomize colors” feature that will automatically generate color palettes on the fly. It utilizes hue rotations based on the Cubehelix color scheme.

    “Hue rotation consists in rotating the hue wheel — such as the one you
    might see in a color picker — by a determined amount of degrees, each turn
    generating a new color,” Gutenberg contributor Vicente Canales said in the PR for the feature. He also noted that this new feature surfaces “the need for themes to explicitly support style randomization, as well as the need to incorporate a way to define a color’s role within a palette as a way of avoiding getting, for example, palettes where background and foreground don’t contrast, rendering text illegible.”

    While randomizing color palettes is a fun feature for users, some theme and plugin developers do not see the need for it to land in core Gutenberg and eventually WordPress.

    “Yes, it’s fun, but from a theme designer’s perspective I don’t see an urgent use since the theme designer can provide numerous style variations,” block and theme developer Ellen Bauer commented on the PR. “For the user this provides the same kind of ‘fun feel’, but theme designers would provide an experience that actually works.

    “There is so much potential in styles, but not much is published yet. So as a theme builder I feel style export/imports, the option to separate font styles from color styles are much more basic features I would love to have first.”

    Newsletter Glue co-founder Lesley Sim agreed that it’s a fun idea but that anyone using a theme will probably rely on the theme’s style variations.

    “And that will probably feel like a randomizer to them already,” Sim said. “At least, that’s how I personally view style variations.

    “I’d much rather focus on basic features first too, rather than fun ones. Let plugin and theme developers build the fun.”

    Other notable features in Gutenberg 14.6 include the following:

    • Block Toolbar is now hidden when Spacing Visualizer is displayed
    • New keyboard shortcut for transforming Paragraph block into Heading block
    • Focal Point handle updated to be more representative of the broader selection area
    • New “Minimum Height” dimension control is now available for the Group and Post Content block

    This update’s performance benchmarks for the site editor and post editor are significantly improved for three out of four metrics over the last release. Check out the release post for a more detailed look at every PR included 14.6.

  • Meetup.com Removes Accessibility Overlay In Response to WordPress Community’s Concerns

    Meetup.com has removed its accessibility overlay, a recent addition to the company’s website that raised concerns with the WordPress community and the broader community of accessibility professionals. The overly was powered by EqualWeb, a product which claims to provide automated compliance with accessibility standards but doesn’t address inaccessibility at the root of the problem.

    WordPress Community Team leaders requested a meeting with the company and were able to persuade them to take the overlay down and focus on direct improvements to the Meetup.com platform. WordPress community organizer Angela Jin reported that their director of engineering and other team members were “very receptive to our feedback.”

    “EqualWeb’s widget does scan for accessibility issues, and the original plan was for EqualWeb’s team (real people!) to provide progressive fixes to the overlay,” Jin said. “Meetup’s hope was to provide, over time, a fully accessible overlay.”

    During the meeting, WordPress’ Community Team representatives contended that overlays create a poor user experience for people who use assistive technology while also ignoring key WCAG issues. This is why there are growing legal and privacy concerns associated with the overlays, which do not deliver on the promise of providing equal and open access to platforms.

    After reporting on the issue earlier this month, one reader asked if the overlays actually work to address the issues and, if so, what is motivating the complaint.

    “They don’t work,” WordPress accessibility contributor Joe Dolson said. “To the degree that they do work, they mostly offer functionality that is already duplicated by the user’s own technology.”

    Dolson examined Meetup.com’s overlay and highlighted a few of its major shortcomings:

    This particular overlay also commits the cardinal sin of labeling tools by disability, rather than according to what they do. For example, if you turn on the “Visually Impaired” mode, that’s actually a high contrast mode; which is only relevant if your visual impairment benefits from high contrast. This kind of presumptive labeling is ineffective at best (because it makes it difficult to find what tool might actually help you, should you need it), and offensive at worst.

    But the reality is that overlay tools are a misdirection of resources: if a user needs high contrast, large fonts, or other tools, they need those on all websites, and they need a solution that’s their tool, in their control, with their settings – and the majority of users already have that in their assistive technology.”

    As part of revising its accessibility roadmap, Meetup.com is requesting feedback from WordPress community members with experience using its platforms across devices with accessibility features enabled. Those who have 50 minutes in the coming weeks can request to speak with Meetup representatives regarding which features should be prioritized. People can also leave feedback in the comments.

    Meetup.com’s decision to remove the overlay was well-received by accessibility advocates who hope to see more changes to the platform’s source code based on community feedback in the next few weeks. Beyond these changes, some community members are also recommending Meetup.com add people with disabilities to their team to get more first-hand information without having to publicly walk back an implementation like this.

    “Although I applaud Meetup for removing the Overlay, they are going at this backwards,” WordPress user @bryan202 said in the comments. “They should have an independent company who employs persons with disabilities to audit their platform and inform them of the issues. If Meetup wants feedback on the specific issues this choice of overlay caused, then they should be willing to pay for that market feedback.

    “As a disabled person we are constantly called upon to give feedback for free. We deserve to be respected for our time, efforts and feedback. Meetup needs to expand their technical team to include persons with disabilities so they have an inside look since their current team is missing this essential component.”

  • Dig Into the Open Web

    As the American Thanksgiving holiday is coming up, I am so grateful for all of our Tavern readers and the people who make WordPress – 800 in the most recent 6.1 release with 35 percent of them being new contributors. This community has made remarkable progress this year, while navigating changes and uncertain times. Committed contributors continue to show up and make WordPress the best platform for publishing on the web.

    The recent social media upheaval with Twitter has been an unexpected gift that has created an opportunity for a mass return to decentralization and open web protocols, like ActivityPub and RSS. The sting of the prospect of losing Twitter followers and the network that users worked to build, has underscored the importance of agency in social networking, the ability to take your data and connections with you to other networks on your own terms.

    Although it is somewhat heartbreaking to see Twitter struggling to survive, one silver lining is that this situation is inspiring a drive towards a greater level of interoperability between apps, like Tumblr engineers working to add ActivityPub support so users can connect across Mastodon and other networks that use the same protocol.

    People are steadily moving away from the all-powerful algorithms that steer consumers and subtly manipulate the public consciousness, and migrating away in search of healthier, more ethical social networking alternatives. The refreshing lack of ads and algorithms are winning people over in decentralized social networks, which are getting a second look from mainstream publications in light of Twitter’s loss of critical engineering teams.

    I’m thankful for this renewed focus on networks that value the open web, where people are now exploring alternatives to walled gardens with their friends, instead of having to start over alone. Never underestimate the power of friction and crisis to refine how we communicate and motivate us to find a better way to stay connected. This is a moment that may have enough traction to change the course of social interaction on the web.

    With things changing all around, it’s heartening to know that WordPress is still here and going strong, for those of us who have chosen it as the home for our content. We’re fortunate to have so many plugins available that connect our ecosystem to the broader web, allowing us to syndicate content to almost anywhere. Let’s not miss this opportunity to dig into the open web and see where it takes us.

  • BuddyPress 11.0.0 to Limit JavaScript and CSS Asset Loading to Community Pages Using a Filter

    BuddyPress will soon be improving the way it loads its JavaScript and CSS assets so that they are only loaded on community pages. Previously, the plugin would load them indiscriminately on every page.

    BuddyPress lead developer Mathieu Viet said he’s not sure there is a specific reason explaining why this was kept in place. Before the plugin introduced the BP Theme Compat API in version 1.7, it was necessary to use a BuddyPress compatible theme like the one bundled by default (BP Default).

    “I think we kept the way this theme was loading these assets into the first Template Pack (BP Legacy) we added to BuddyPress,” Viet said.

    Users have often requested BuddyPress only load its assets on community pages in hopes of further optimizing their websites. For example, in 2020, a user on the BuddyDev forums requested custom code to accomplish this. Experts recommended against doing it

    “It is not going to help you much and will cause a lot of issues in future,” BuddyPress contributor Brajesh Singh said. “There are dependent plugins which may start throwing JavaScript errors and breaking some of your site functionality. It is not worth the effort.”

    Singh recommended the user enable browser caching to avoid loading the assets multiple times and stick to best practices for enabling gzip compression and other optimization measure. He also recommended adding a plugin that would conditionally prevent loading BuddyPress on certain pages.

    Coming in version 11.0.0, BuddyPress core will progressively move towards loading only the assets it needs in community areas. This update will still load JS and CSS everywhere but will offer a filter that users can add to their bp-custom.php files in order to keep BP assets on community pages only:

    add_filter( ‘bp_enqueue_assets_in_bp_pages_only’, ‘__return_true’ );

    “If using the above filter, you notice something is going wrong with your website due to the use of a specific BP plugin or theme, report it here and we’ll then have another development cycle to fix things before we completely restrict these assets to BuddyPress generated pages in a second step in version 12.0.0,” Viet said.

    Version 11.0.0 is expected to be released on December 14, 2022. Early adopters and BuddyPress site owners who have always wished for the plugin to behave this way can take advantage of it after the next major update using the filter. The filter can also be easily removed if users are troubleshooting and having issues with plugins.

  • New Tool Checks If Google Fonts Are Hosted Locally

    Earlier this year, WordPress’ Themes Team began urging theme authors to switch to locally hosted fonts after a German court case decision, which fined a website owner for violating the GDPR by using Google-hosted webfonts. Since that ruling, German website owners have continued to receive threats of fines for not having their fonts hosted locally.

    The makers of the Fonts Plugin, a commercial product with a free version on WordPress.org, have created a tool called Google Fonts Checker that will help website owners discover where their fonts are hosted. The tool analyzes any URL entered and if the fonts are hosted by Google, it says “Google Fonts Connection Found” with a red ‘X.’ Sites that are in the clear will show a notice that a Google Fonts connection was not found:

    Google Fonts Checker is useful for non-technical users who are not sure whether their theme or plugins are referencing fonts hosted on Google’s servers. Beyond delivering the simple connection message, the tool scans the website and returns a list of the font files used to render the page, which can be helpful in tracking down the specific extension loading these files.

    More than 200,000 people are using the Fonts Plugin to load assets from the Google Fonts Library. Although the Google Fonts Checker tool is free to use and doesn’t require any personal information or login, the free version of the Fonts Plugin doesn’t support hosting fonts locally. Users will either need to upgrade to the commercial version or use a different plugin, like Local Google Fonts or the OMGF | Host Google Fonts Locally plugin, both of which perform this for free.

    Those who find a Google Fonts connection using the tool may also consider switching to Bunny Fonts, an open-source, privacy-first web font platform with no tracking or logging that is fully GDPR compliant. It can act as a drop-in replacement to Google Fonts. The Replace Google Fonts with Bunny Fonts plugin makes it easy to switch.

    Some of WordPress’ older default themes are still loading fonts from Google. A ticket for bundling the fonts with the legacy default themes had patches and was on track to be included in WordPress 6.1, but ended up getting punted to a future release after it was determined the approach needed more work. In the meantime, those who are concerned about using Google Fonts in older default themes can use a plugin to host them locally.