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    Episode 58

    02 Jul 2021

    In this issue, our main focus will be on Kirby, and we want to take you with us on our journey towards Kirby 3.6 right from the very beginnings. With Kirby 3.5.7 comes an important security release (see below). But of course, you will also find other interesting links from our industry.

    Kirby 3.6 Alpha

    Kirby 3.6 is probably the most important release since we published Kirby 3 almost 2.5 years ago. With this new version, we lay a strong foundation for Kirby's future and all the highly-requested features which are currently not so easy to implement. Kirby 3.6 will make Kirby more stable, more extendable, and much more fun for years to come.

    Are you ready? Here are some appetizers:

    Fiber

    Fiber is Kirby's brand-new backend architecture for the Panel. It greatly simplifies the Panel and Panel plugins, making it easier to implement new features and write all sorts of plugins for the Panel.

    Panel areas & extensions

    Our new Fiber architecture splits the Panel in areas: site area, users area, settings area, etc. You can now create your own areas and build entire applications on top of the Panel. Areas replace the previous views.

    Panel Theming

    Extensive use of CSS variables in the Panel make it much easier to create themes for the Panel.

    Navigation options

    Navigating between pages in the Panel is now completely customizable via blueprint.

    Cardlets

    Cardlets are a new layout type for Panel sections and the pages and files fields. They fill the gap between the list and card layouts.

    Custom file type extensions

    Easily extend Kirby's built-in file support with custom file and mime types.

    Modern image formats

    Our image processing API now supports WebP and AVIF as better alternatives for JPEG/PNG images.

    Of course, there's a lot more to discover! Want to know more or play with the new features right now? The full list of features is on our new 3.6 Microsite. Or directly download the 3.6 Alpha developer preview and start exploring.

    Kirby 3.5.7 security release

    Kirby 3.5.7 comes with a whole new set of fixes and improvements. Note that this version is also a security release, so we strongly recommend you update to this version.

    Kirby in the wild

    Websites created with Kirby out in the wild are always a great source of inspiration and show that with its flexibility and extensibility, there are hardly any limits to what you can create with Kirby.

    Drigani

    Plugins

    Merkur Blocks Loader allows you to autoload blocks from a site/blocks folder to keep block-related files in one place without having to create a plugin for blocks.

    Create structured data to organize and connect microdata based on JSON Linked Data format (JSON-LD) with the Kirby JSON-LD plugin.

    With the Kirby 3 Many-to-Many field, you create many-to-many relationships between pages in Kirby.

    Kirby 3 Dejure automatically links (German) legal norms & jurisdiction to (https://dejure.org).

    Implement an event calendar on your site with the Kirby Calendar plugin.

    Problems with color profiles and washed-out colors in thumbnails? Try Kirby 3 Imagekit with support for color-managed thumbnails (experimental plugin, see README).

    Always test third-party plugins thoroughly before using them in production. Note that we do not test plugins we list here.

    Articles about Kirby

    Anne-Sophie Tranchet shares her experiences building Design Accessible with Kirby in her French article How to create a site with Kirby.

    Cookbook recipes

    Learn how to update missing/outdated file templates or change other file metadata programmatically.

    Tools

    Fig adds VSCode-style autocomplete to your existing terminal. Fig offers powerful autocompletion for hundreds of CLI tools.

    If you want to quickly create a nice image of a code snippet for posting on social media, CodeImg.io might be your go-to tool.

    JavaScript

    Learn about the DOM Event system through exploration with the DOM events visualizer. It's actually part of a paid course, but you can watch the intro to the tool for free.

    PHP

    InvoiScript is a PHP library to generate simple PDF invoices by Martin Zurowietz, creator of the popular Kirby Uniform plugin. While this is not a Kirby plugin, it can easily be integrated into with Kirby with a plugin wrapper.

    If you are using VS Code as your go-to code editor, and you need some ideas how to best set it up for PHP projects, check out this new tutorial from DigitalOcean.

    Frontend

    Serving images to high-density screens while keeping file size at a minimum, is not trivial. However, new image formats like webp or aviv in combination with the picture element go a long way to ease the pain.

    A11y

    Nic Chan wrote up a complete guide to accessibility tooling.

    WebAIM published their 2021 Screen Reader survey.

    Linux

    How to create a secure-by-default Linux server, using Ansible and the DevSec Hardening Framework.

    Ibraheem Ahmed collects a list of modern Unix tools that make life on the command line more comfortable.

    This & That

    Thinking <button role="link"> is ever acceptable in place of <a href> is dogmatic transubstantiation belief nonsense. Adrian Roselli on Twitter

    Julie Kent shares some useful git tricks.

    Asynchronous Design Critique: Giving Feedback by Erin Casali: "Feedback, in whichever form it takes, and whatever it may be called, is one of the most effective soft skills that we have at our disposal to collaboratively get our designs to a better place while growing our own skills and perspectives".

    Reminder that design shouldn't sacrifice usability: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances.