[PatternFly] PatternFly Newsletter: Jul – Sept 2020

Thu Oct 1 12:00:00 UTC 2020

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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