A couple of WordPress 6.5 release blockers surfaced, one related to the Font Library and the other related to Synced Pattern Overrides. Here is a discussion of the issues, together with the decisions. The short version is that the Font Library will be included in 6.5 and Synced Pattern Overrides will be pushed to 6.6.

Beyond these two issues, the discussion brings to light future plans for block themes. There are plans for “composability” for block themes. From Wikipedia: “Composability is a system design principle that deals with the inter-relationships of components. A highly composable system provides components that can be selected and assembled in various combinations to satisfy specific user requirements.” The news here is that the plan is to allow block themes to be split into components and allow users to swap components (such as fonts) without changing themes.

Native support for AVIF is coming in WordPress 6.5. AVIF images can be up to 50% smaller than a JPG image with the same or better image quality. Can I use says there is about 89% browser support.

Here is another good developer feature coming to WordPress 6.5, it is the merge of the Plugin Dependencies project. This provides a standard method for plugins to declare plugin prerequisites and is useful on plugin activation and deactivation.

WordPress 6.5 will include a new Interactivity API for developers. This merge announcement on the Make blog outlines the goals and provides some good background about how it is implemented. It looks like a solid addition that people will be able to build on.

There is a new font manager coming in WordPress 6.5. In this video I look at how it works and its limitations.

The results of the 2023 Annual Survey have been released.

Today’s WordPress 6.4.3 update contained security patches for two minor issues in core.

A maintenance release of 6.4.3 is being prepared and is currently targeted for January 30th.

It is good to see that the number of contributors and people making their first contribution to core continues to increase year over year. Other interesting stats show the number of contributors by country and contributions by company.