July – September 2020 PatternFly Newsletter One thing’s for sure: It’s never boring in the PatternFly community! These past three months have been full of exciting PatternFly updates across design, development, accessibility, and more. Let’s take a look at some highlights. *PatternFly mid-year review*
In August, the PatternFly team assembled virtually for a two-day meetup to look at what we’ve accomplished for the year, what’s left to do, and what we should be thinking about as we move towards 2021. We discussed how we can continue making progress in various areas, including accessibility testing and training, design reviewal processes, the developer experience, release testing, and website improvements. Website and design guidelines - PatternFly’s website has a new look <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/>! Our website redesign efforts began last year with user research. We examined how the website can be designed so that information is easier to find and documentation is more consistent and comprehensive. Stay tuned for more information on this exciting update. - As part of the website redesign, a “Design guidelines” tab was added for each component. This means that accompanying design documentation has either been added to every PatternFly component or will be added in the future. - Some updates and additions were made to various design guidelines, including toolbars, data list and tables, inline edit, banners, and primary-detail. Visual design - During the first half of 2020, we introduced several visual design improvements in response to feedback. These changes include reducing whitespace in various elements, improving tab visuals, and simplifying the vertical navigation component. - Some work was done on PatternFly’s variables to clean up inconsistencies and unused variables from older component versions. To improve scalability and ease of use, we’re exploring future-looking improvements to our overall variable structure. - Dark theme efforts continue to move forward. Initial small-scale tests were a success for a dark theme approach, which would automatically provide a dark version of all page and component styling. Next steps are to refine the dark theme color palette and extend testing to large-scale product experiences. PatternFly design kit - Symbols were added to labels <https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-design-kit/issues/193>, tiles <https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-design-kit/issues/220>, tree view <https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-design-kit/issues/239>, and toggle group <https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-design-kit/issues/268>. - Templates were added to the notification drawer <https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-design-kit/issues/213>, navigation <https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-design-kit/issues/178>, dashboard cards <https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-design-kit/issues/4>, and toolbar <https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-design-kit/issues/163>. - A couple labels were added to better categorize the kit’s symbols: “Pre-release” means the design is done but has yet to be implemented, and “Core-only” means the component is only implemented in Core and not yet in React. - Marvel recently updated its handoff tool to include insights into layers like symbols, appearances, and additional layers. Make sure to check it out in this example handoff project <https://marvelapp.com/prototype/f04f0ca/screen/71923897/handoff>. - To make the design kit accessible to everyone, we’ve exported all symbols as SVG files <https://github.com/patternfly/patternfly-design-kit/tree/master/Symbol-SVGs> so that designers can pull them into any design program. Developer experience - We’re working on refactoring the PatternFly Core, React, and Org repos to remove Gatsby for quicker build times, increased flexibility, and reduced page load for PatternFly’s website documentation. - Several new Katacoda training courses were added to the website. They cover PatternFly concepts, basic implementation, and specific component usage. - We’re reviewing our existing starter projects and considering introducing a Yeoman generator. Accessibility We continue to forge ahead with our goal of making PatternFly fully accessible with improved testing and additional updates. The accessibility team has completed an audit of existing components and is making ongoing updates to improve accessibility for users whose primary mode of interaction is either the keyboard or a screen reader. Content - A number of articles went out this past quarter, including an interview with Red Hat’s UXD Researchers <https://medium.com/patternfly/from-interviewers-to-interviewees-meet-red-hats-ux-research-team-af860a65abc5>, information on cleanup and miscellaneous changes <https://medium.com/patternfly/cleanup-and-miscellaneous-changes-2020-major-release-update-2e4b88360709> from PatternFly’s major release, and an article on the importance of accessibility in UX <https://medium.com/patternfly/inclusivity-as-an-extension-of-accessibility-why-we-cant-rely-on-empathy-alone-cadef7d5e2ee>. You can find all articles under the All articles tab <https://medium.com/patternfly/tagged/patternfly> on PatternFly Medium’s home page. - We’re continuing to collect feedback and ideas from Flyers on how to improve our social channels <https://medium.com/patternfly/as-our-next-chapter-begins-lets-share-the-pen-a2c56e8bd352>. You can submit your feedback through this Medium Google Form <https://red.ht/3mUomuA> and this Twitter Google Form <https://red.ht/2ExzMmO>. - PatternFly Medium now features submission guidelines <https://medium.com/patternfly/submitting-to-patternflys-medium-publication-d809a75b4ea2> so that every Flyer knows exactly what to do if they’d like to contribute an article. - What do the Flyer fundamentals mean to you? Read all about them on PatternFly’s home page <https://www.patternfly.org/v4/> and then share your thoughts with us <https://red.ht/368TXD8>. We’ll be using this feedback to craft a Medium article on how these fundamentals make an impact on the work we all do. - To retire our deprecated blog without losing any of its content, we audited historic posts and moved them to PatternFly Medium. You can access them under PatternFly Medium home page’s PatternPast tab <https://medium.com/patternfly/patternpast/home>. 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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