Plugin Roadmaps for H1 2011

This year, with two plugins in an actual active development state, the plan is to try something a little different. Previously, Breadcrumb NavXT was the “favored child” that always received preferential treatment. As a result, releases slipped for the other plugins, namely WP Lynx.

Rather than separate development cycles, both Breadcrumb NavXT and WP Lynx will have synchronized release cycles. They will be released in “Release Waves”; Breadcrumb NavXT will aim for Mondays, WP Lynx will aim for Friday of the same week. Note that this is only for major releases, bug fix releases will maintain their “as needed” time line.

WP Lynx

So, WP Lynx has not seen a release in quite a while. A combination of events have lead to this, but it will change within the next two months. The current plan is to release 0.3 around the same time as Breadcrumb NavXT 3.8.0. The following are still on the docket for 0.3.0:

• URL shortener support, allow the user to set the included URL to be a shortened URL for TinyURL or other URL shortening services. This will have several tie ins, including Link Print template tags.
• Link Print templates, these will work similar to the anchor templates in Breadcrumb NavXT and will allow the user to automate changes to the default Link Print markup.
• Fix various bugs related to multi site support introduced with WordPress 3.0.
• Add support for full screen editor mode. At the moment, in full screen editor mode, the icon for adding a Link Print is missing. This requires a TinyMCE plugin for adding the button to be created.

These tasks for 0.3 have been listed in order of priority, any that do not make it to 0.3 will be rolled into 0.4. Later releases this year should see the following:

• Tighter integration with WordPress 3.1 Post Formats.
• Rewrite scaping code to use the WordPress HTTP API, set as default but allow users to use old calling code if they desire to.
• Enhance the Link Print adding interface, allow user specified image cropping.

Breadcrumb NavXT

The current tasks list for Breadcrumb NavXT is quite large. Several things must be done to meet the needs of other projects. Currently, the following are on the todo list for version 3.8.0:

• Create display_nested function, this is to facilitate support for the Google’s Breadcrumbs Rich Snippits Format.
• Fix issue with current_item prefixes and suffixes being applied multiple times on multiple runs on the same page.
• Add support for paged posts/pages a la what exists for paged archives.
• Introduce more filters to aid in plugin extension.

Later releases this year will see the following:

• Tweaks to the anchor template system, this will improve performance, and functionality.
• Refactoring of the attachment handling code.
• Contextually aware taxonomy option, generates a slightly different breadcrumb trail depending on how a user arrived at a post.
• Improve link code for the current item.

Breadcrumb NavXT 4.0 will not feature a complete rewriting of the core. Instead, the opportunity will be used to tweak the settings and the way things are done internally to facilitate easier integration of new WordPress features.

If there is a feature you want for either of these two plugins, but it was not covered in this post, feel free to leave a comment requesting it.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]