October – December 2020PatternFly Newsletter Happy new year, Flyers! With 2021 underway, we’re excited to share the latest highlights across design, development, accessibility, and content.
Let’s reflect on last quarter’s strides as we enter the new year with PatternFly pride. *Release highlights* Looking for a crash course on new PatternFly features and enhancements? Last quarter, we started our new release highlights series on GitHub <https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-org/tree/master/release-highlights>! Git up, git out, and git excited for a scannable summary of what’s new and what to look forward to in each PatternFly release. Components and design guidelines - We created new design guidelines for dropdown, menu, form control, label, and label group components. - We added extra-small empty state to our empty state guidelines <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/components/empty-state/design-guidelines>. - Our UX writing style guide <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/ux-writing/about> has lots of new content guidance for you to explore. PatternFly design kit - Our PatternFly design kit is looking fresh with new symbols and templates! - We added symbols to datepicker <https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-design-kit/issues/36>, skeleton loading <https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-design-kit/issues/221>, dual list selector <https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-design-kit/issues/301>, single toggle group item <https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-design-kit/issues/289>, and splitter <https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-design-kit/issues/320> . - Templates were added for page navigation <https://www.sketch.com/s/729c2eee-e8b6-4fcd-8a79-f6faa8c30f89/p/navigation>, extra-small variation empty states <https://www.sketch.com/s/729c2eee-e8b6-4fcd-8a79-f6faa8c30f89/a/LwapM3>, and tables and data lists with radio buttons <https://www.sketch.com/s/729c2eee-e8b6-4fcd-8a79-f6faa8c30f89/a/338LEm>. - You can now more effectively manage symbols, colors, and layers, and text in your PatternFly designs thanks to three new Sketch features: color variables, component view, and insert view. PatternFly Community updates - PatternFly Elements <https://patternflyelements.org/get-started/>, a community created by Red Hat’s web-based developers, just launched their 1.0 release! PatternFly Elements 1.0 provides flexible, lightweight, and themable components to simplify building and customizing branded web experiences. We congratulate them and wish them well as they continue down their project roadmap <https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-elements/projects/2>! Developer updates - Complex components accomplish a lot behind the scenes, but they require a lot of complex knowledge to do it. We’re discussing how to reduce PatternFly’s larger components into smaller sets to make complicated behaviors easier to understand, implement, and improve. Smaller components support straightforward development and streamlined documentation, increasing performance and leaving less room for confusion along the way. - Gain finer control over complex table builds with composable table components <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/components/table/#tablecomposable-examples>. We rebuilt the existing full-featured table component with these new components for improved performance. This composable approach carries into the new menu component <https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-react/pull/4847>, too. - We’re continuing to evaluate existing and new components for ways to simplify use and amplify control for increased performance across PatternFly. Accessibility Last quarter, we made significant improvements to the JAWS screen reader experience: - Based on customer feedback, we updated the dropdown component <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/components/dropdown> to announce functionality and disabled items, making it now fully accessible in JAWS. - Options menu <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/components/options-menu> and application launcher <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/components/application-launcher> are now JAWS-accessible, too. - We automatically check for accessibility errors in each PatternFly PR using automated axe testing. Last quarter, we added additional accessibility keyboard interactivity testing, including Cypress testing for buttons, modals, forms, and cards. - We added screen reader text to the skeleton component <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/components/skeleton> so that screen readers report when content is still loading. We’re continuing to pinpoint and pursue accessibility improvements across PatternFly as we enhance existing components and build new ones like date picker <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/components/date-picker>, jump links <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/components/jump-links>, dual list selector <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/components/dual-list-selector>, and touchspin <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/components/touchspin>. Content - Our UX writing style guide is constantly evolving based on research and feedback. We updated PatternFly writing guidance for capitalization <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/ux-writing/capitalization>, error messages <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/ux-writing/error-messages>, numerics <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/ux-writing/numerics>, and units and symbols <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/ux-writing/units-and-symbols>. - PatternFly Medium surpassed 150 followers and published 8 new articles on a number of topics like our website redesign <https://medium.com/patternfly/patternfly-website-redesign-ux-381da0884734>, scripting UX research <https://medium.com/patternfly/ux-research-user-testing-creative-writing-569334f32693>, and internationalizing products for global users <https://medium.com/patternfly/localization-international-ux-development-patternfly-openshift-f790c89b9f8b>. Curl up in your favorite reading nook and catch up on all the latest PatternFly stories <https://medium.com/patternfly/tagged/patternfly>! - We’re featured on the Red Hat Developers site! Readers can now learn about PatternFly and access our interactive tutorials right from the JavaScript page <https://developers.redhat.com/topics/javascript>. - What does being a Flyer mean to you? Last quarter, Flyers reflected on their PatternFly journey <https://medium.com/patternfly/giving-thanks-a-reflection-on-patternflys-community-and-fundamentals-e31129dbd1e4> – and we now have an official community page <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/community> dedicated to fantastic Flyers just like you. Discover more - PatternFly website <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/> - PatternFly Twitter <https://twitter.com/patternfly> - PatternFly Medium <https://medium.com/patternfly> - Get in touch <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/get-in-touch/>
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