//: Weekly.Huddle.2

Never Too Late

Maybe we'll turn it all around 'cause it's not too late
It's never too late
~Three Days Grace

This email may be a bit late, but to you... it's arrived precisely when it's intended to. Welcome to the second edition of the Weekly Huddle

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Life's been busy. I think we're all feeling it in this season. Between several work projects and all of the things family members get into, I feel like free time is a fleeting moment in the past. Still, there's no people I'd rather spend it with than my family, friends, and co-workers.

Target: Blank as an Anti-Pattern?

A conversation between Chris Ferinandi and Michael Beckwith had us chatting in our "BEEFEE Scrum" (Backend Engineer + Frontend Engineer) this week. And our findings were surprising, to say the least.

The argument mentioned above is simple: forcing a user to open a new tab removes the agency from the user and poses issues for the cognitively impaired. This goes against the current standard approach to new tabs: Internal links get the same tab, External links get a new tab.

It was mentioned that having some sort of indicator for an external link is a good start to the solution, but as it turns out, Chris is right: not only is it an anti-pattern, but it actually goes against the W3C recommendations: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/G200.html​

They only recommend a new tab in two scenarios:

1. Open a page to context-sensitive information (like documentation or help text)
2. Following a secure link to a page outside of the session.

Our discussion ended with an agreement that it's OK to "right click" to open a new tab if we, the user, see fit. If anyone wants to weigh in on the discussion, please feel free to let me know on BlueSky or X what your thoughts are.

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Resources

I was fortunate to be able to lead a workshop for the WordPress training team - Mastering the Query Loop block in WordPress. We had over 100+ RSVPs and 35+ attendees, which many opting to get the video later. Said video, in fact, is already on WordPress.TV should you choose to view it (you should choose to!)

​https://wordpress.tv/2025/09/26/mastering-the-query-loop-block-in-wordpress/​

Other Resources

• ​https://github.com/ChromeDevTools/chrome-devtools-mcp/ A DevTools MCP for Development in Cursor - great for testing!
• ​https://wordpress.com/blog/2025/09/23/telex-turns-everyone-into-a-wordpress-block-developer/ - A somewhat 'magical' block development prompt put out by Automattic. Want to create a custom WordPress block? Give this a try!

• Brian Gardner is taking his Powder theme and using a new (but increasingly popular) approach - everything possible instead of everything being included. Powder is already a rock-solid theme, so it'll be interesting to see what that means.

Front End Articles Worth Viewing:

​https://frontendmasters.com/blog/what-you-need-to-know-about-modern-css-2025-edition/​

​http://css-tricks.com/is-it-time-to-un-sass/​

​GitHubabinthomasonline/repo2txt - useful for adding your site contents to a MDC file for Cursor

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In Closing

Maybe the next issue will be more timely, but until then... I'm like Gandalf - appearing when you least expect it (and probably about 5 minutes later than I should have been... but c'est la vie.

Time to Participate!

What feature in WordPress are you looking forward to the most?

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