UI Suite Monthly #06 - New Maintainers, Major Releases, and Ecosystem Growth

Our sixth monthly meeting showcased significant progress across multiple Drupal ecosystem modules, with exciting developments in design system implementation, new maintainer introductions, and substantial feature releases.

Overall Summary

Our March 2023 UI Suite meeting highlighted the growing maturity of our ecosystem, with several modules reaching production readiness and new contributors joining our initiative. We welcomed Sharik as a new maintainer for UI Patterns and celebrated the release of UI Styles 1.5 with enhanced CKEditor 5 integration. Key discussions centered around design system transformations, theme compatibility challenges, and the future roadmap for UI Patterns 2.0.

The meeting also featured comprehensive demos of UI Style Views and UI Styles CKEditor 5, showcasing practical applications for content contributors and site builders. Our strategic planning discussions included potential integration with Single Directory Components (SDC) and expansion into form management capabilities.

Key Topics Discussed

New Team Member & Maintainer Changes

We welcomed significant changes to our maintainer structure during this meeting.

• Sharique Introduction: We introduced our new UI Patterns maintainer, Sharique, who joins us from India (currently based in Berlin). He brings over 4 years of Drupal development experience with a focus on backend development and frontend expertise.

• Module Maintenance Transition: Sharik will take over maintenance of the discrete sub-module, as he's currently the only active user of Deep Suite on our team. We're also planning to extract this module from UI Patterns into a separate Drupal project in the future.

UI Patterns Development

Our UI Patterns module saw several important discussions around compatibility and future development.

• Theme Compatibility Challenges: We discovered side effects with multiple theme support in the UI Patterns Library, requiring us to make strategic decisions about how patterns are discovered across enabled themes.

• Pattern Integration Progress: We discussed our ongoing work to merge UI Patterns with UI Styles into UI Patterns Views without creating additional sub-modules, maintaining our streamlined approach.

• Tags System Discovery: We found that there's already a PHP class-based tag system in pattern definitions that can be easily activated in the Patterns Library, though it's not enabled by default.

• UI Patterns 2.0 Vision: We began early planning discussions for a major transformation with breaking changes, encouraging our community to share even radical new ideas for this future version.

UI Style Major Releases

We celebrated significant progress in our UI Style module with new releases and ecosystem expansion.

• Version 1.5 Launch: We released UI Style 1.5 featuring a new Sick ID top five iteration with enhanced capabilities.

• First Ecosystem Module: Sharik created UI Styles Paragraphs (Alpha release), marking our first official UI Styles modules ecosystem and demonstrating the growing adoption of our approach.

• CKEditor 5 Integration: We developed a comprehensive submodule providing both block and inline styling capabilities with mutually exclusive options support.

Live Technical Demonstrations

Our meeting featured hands-on demonstrations of key functionality.

• UI Styles Views: We showcased integration capabilities allowing style application to three main view sections: exposed forms, format/style options, and pager elements.

• UI Styles CKEditor 5: We demonstrated our two-plugin system for block and inline styles with granular configuration options and HTML tag filter compatibility.

• Preview System Limitations: We addressed current challenges with backend preview functionality, which requires custom theme implementation due to CSS file reference constraints.

Layout & Styling Module Updates

We provided updates on our broader styling and layout capabilities.

• Layout Options Module: We continued discussions about the complexity of subject removal, planning a careful and methodical approach to avoid disrupting existing implementations.

• UI Skins Adoption: Our Alpha UI Skins module is showing strong adoption with 35+ websites already using it, featuring three core capabilities: theme settings, global CSS variables, and CSS variable assessments.

• Upcoming Features: We're planning team management and page layout functionality for our next development cycle.

Community Growth & Recognition

We celebrated our community expansion and external recognition.

• French Government Design System: We released a beta version representing a mature, production-ready implementation that has been successfully deployed on websites for over a year.

• Community Milestone: We're approaching our 100 community members milestone, reflecting the growing interest in our initiative.

• External Coverage: Yuri Jerasimov published an article highlighting our UI Suite ecosystem, with particular focus on UI Patterns component capabilities.

Strategic Integration Discussions

We addressed several complex integration challenges and future planning considerations.

• View Integration Issues: We identified bugs where pattern mapping to entities causes preview failures in the Views backend, prompting discussion of potential workarounds.

• Single Directory Components (SDC): We're strategically evaluating compatibility with UI Patterns, considering two main approaches: using SDC as a component provider to UI Patterns, or building a new UI Patterns version on top of SDC.

• Form Integration Complexity: We discussed the significant challenges with Form API integration, particularly around careful consideration of pattern injection into form render arrays.

Key Action Points

Immediate Development Tasks

We identified several critical development tasks that require immediate attention from our community.

• UI Patterns-Styles Integration: We need to complete the hookup data and unit tests for our UI Patterns-Styles integration. Since this is outside our typical expertise area, we're actively seeking community assistance.

• Patterns Library Tags System: We plan to create a GitHub issue for activating the tags system in our Pattern Library, making it available to all users by default.

• Multiple Themes Fix: Before merging our multiple themes compatibility fix, we need to add unit tests and carefully consider the strategic implications of extending pattern discovery across all enabled themes.

• Pattern Block Updates: We need to propose a patch for pattern block compatibility updates, particularly for the m4.tml file changes.

• CKEditor 5 Documentation: We're developing starter kit documentation to help users implement CKEditor 5 preview functionality in their custom themes.

Community Engagement Priorities

We're encouraging broader community participation across several key areas.

• Plugin Definition Enhancement: We need community input on adding links or markdown to plugin definitions, though this isn't urgent and allows time for thoughtful proposals.

• Toolbar Links Discussion: We're seeking community opinions on moving toolbar links from the report menu to the appearance menu, with no current preference from our core team.

• Patterns Reviews Reorganization: Eduard created a comprehensive ticket about reorganizing pattern reviews that could significantly improve our Pattern Library and user understanding. We encourage community participation as this may become a priority work item.

• UI Patterns 2.0 Input: We're actively soliciting community feedback on breaking changes and new features for our major future version, encouraging even radical ideas.

• Production Testing: We need community members to test and provide feedback on our production implementations, particularly for newer releases.

Module-Specific Development

Each of our major modules has specific action items that require focused attention.

• UI Styles Enhancements: We're continuing development of our Views and CKEditor 5 integrations while addressing preview system limitations that currently require custom theme implementations.

• UI Skins Feature Development: We're implementing our next major features including team management and page layout functionality.

• French Government Design System (DSFR): We're awaiting official announcement credentials to begin community building and promotion efforts.

• Layout Options Refinement: We need to develop a clean, methodical approach for removing layout subjects without disrupting existing implementations.

Strategic Planning & Research

We're conducting several strategic initiatives that will shape our future direction.

• SDC Compatibility Assessment: We're closely monitoring and evaluating Single Directory Components compatibility for future UI Patterns development, participating in ongoing discussions and merge requests.

• Virginia Admin Theme Integration: We're exploring potential integration opportunities between UI Skins and Gin Admin Theme, given their shared use of CSS variables.

• UI Examples Module Planning: We're considering the development of a UI Examples module to address our need for form demonstration capabilities.

• Community Initiative Promotion: We're evaluating the possibility of promoting our UI Suite as a community initiative organization before DrupalCon, pending approval processes.

Upcoming Deadlines / Releases

The UI Suite Initiative continues to demonstrate strong momentum with active development, growing community engagement, and practical solutions for Drupal's design system challenges. The next monthly meeting promises further developments in ecosystem integration and community growth.