[PatternFly] PatternFly Newsletter: Oct – Dec 2020

[Alana Fialkoff]

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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