Week in Core, Jan. 26 – Feb. 2 2016

Hi everybody! Welcome back to the latest issue of Week in Core, covering changes from January 26th [36407] – February 2nd [36470], changesets [36407-36470]. Here are the highlights:

• 64 commits
• 16 contributors with props
• 83 tickets created
• 6 tickets reopened
• 45 tickets closed

Ticket numbers based on trac timeline for the period above.

Note: If you want to help write the next WordPress Core Weekly summary, check out the schedule over at make/docs and get in touch in the #core-weekly-update Slack channel.

Code Updates

Networks and sites

• Replace “blog” usage with “site” in docs. [36417] [36416] #35417

Database

• Allow loading when only the mysqlnd extension is loaded. [36434] #33261

Performance

• Add a close() method to wpdb, for when the connection needs to be manually closed. [36433] #34903

Customizer

• Fix searching for available nav menu items by updating reference to nonce. [36432] #35617
• Export nonce, theme, and url app settings in preview as exported in pane. [36414] #27355, #35617
• Improve parity between JS Setting models in preview with JS Setting models in pane. [36407] #27355, #35616

Media

• In wp_read_image_metadata() make sure that IPTC keywords are UTF8 encoded. [36429] #35316

Menus

• Avoid displaying two spinners when adding selected menu items. [36427] #35682
• After [36379] prevent “Quick Search” form submission when pressing Enter. [36426] #35374
• Remove a redundant and unused 0 parameter from the Delete Menu link on the nav menus admin screen. [36419] #35641

Comments

• Add back $req variable in comments_template(). Reverts [36322]. [36425] #35473
• Add a back link to wp_die() comment form submission error display. [36424] #4332
• Fix set up/tear down of post types in comment query test. [36415] #35633

Install

• Improve the install page language chooser button style. [36423] #34547

UI

• Remove all the occurrences of the old CSS clearfix. [36422] #26396

Multisite

• Add the global cache group sites to restore_current_blog() and wp_start_object_cache(). [36413] #32450
• Add the global cache group networks to restore_current_blog(). Missed in [36258]. [36411] #35251

General

• Simplify action placement in update_metadata(). [36420] #35652
• Revert changes to wp_validate_redirect()  [35792]. This causes a regression and causes redirects to potentially fail. [35792]  #5114, #34028
• Pass additional params to get_archive_links filter. [36418] #35573

Docs

• Document the difference between site_url() and home_url(). [36408] #35238

External Libraries

• Update Random_Compat to the latest version (1.1.6). [36421] #35665

Props

Thanks to @afercia, @boonebgorges, @dd32, @ericlewis, @helen, @jorbin, @kouratoras, @nexurium, @ocean90, @pento, @rachelbaker, @sebastianpisula, @shamess, @Shelob9, @westonruter, and @wonderboymusic for their contributions!

Week in Core, Jan. 26 – Feb. 2 2016 by Andrew Rockwell was originally posted at https://make.wordpress.org/core/2016/02/04/week-in-core-jan-26-feb-2-2016/