Astra Theme

After upgrading to the latest version of the Astra theme, I discovered a lack up compatibility with previous versions. To be clear, this update was just from the previous version.

In the new version, a series of color palettes was introduced. Color palettes allows the theme implementor to select a set of colors for the different palettes. However, no palette respected the filter used for colors in previous versions so all the colors needed to be reset. This lack of compatibility makes extra work for a developer or designer and confusion for the site owner.

In addition, the block editor no longer used the colors set by adding theme support for custom colors. This means moving editor colors to a theme.json file. Another developer inconvenience and potential user issue.

While using theme.json might be the future, it has bugs. One of the issues I noticed is that alignment is missing from the toolbar whenever theme.json is used. This can completely mess up styles on the frontend which might be using a class like alignwide for styling.

Gutenberg

The biggest issue I have with Gutenberg 11.6.0  is the use of preset styles for fonts with !important. This means that previously working font sizes are suddenly wrong! I don’t think a plugin like Gutenberg should ever presume to apply presets like that. This can be overridden using theme.json but then the layout issue with the missing alignment occurs!

Let’s Encrypt

Let’s encrypt changed its root certificate so that older browsers are no longer supported. While most people likely have devices that will still work, there are definitely those with older devices. I received two calls today with just such problems.