4.3 release page (redux)

[adamscott]

Warning

Work in progress

Follow-up to #878

Simplified the HTML code to more basic stuff.

Screenshot

Todo

Godot Foundation

• Intro/donate text

Download

• Download text

Outstanding features

• 2D physics interpolation new video

C#

• Determine which cards are needed
• Fill the cards
• Images/video for C#?

Documentation

• Determine which cards are needed
• Fill the cards
• Images/video for Documentation?

GDExtension

• Determine which cards are needed
• Fill the cards
• Images/video for GDExtension?

GDScript

• "Autocompletion fixes" blockquote
• "Autocompletion fixes" text
• "Autocompletion fixes" media (a video could be nice)

Navigation

• Determine which cards are needed
• Fill the cards
• Images/video for navigation?

Rendering

• "Compositor effects API" text
• "RenderingDevice context management refactor" text
• "Compatibility rendering backend features" text
• "Premultiplied alpha blending in 3D shaders" text
• "Premultiplied alpha blending in 3D shaders" media
• "Acyclic rendering graph" blockquote
• "Acyclic rendering graph" text
• "Acyclic rendering graph" media

XR

• "Composition layers to allow 2D viewports to be displayed at much higher quality" blockquote
• "Composition layers to allow 2D viewports to be displayed at much higher quality" text
• "Composition layers to allow 2D viewports to be displayed at much higher quality" media?
• "Fixed tracking issues in the native mobile interface" text
• "Improvements to foveated rendering/vrs, passthrough, and various other supporting systems" text
• "Standardized and enhanced support for hand/finger tracking, body tracking, and face tracking" blockquote
• "Standardized and enhanced support for hand/finger tracking, body tracking, and face tracking" text
• "Standardized and enhanced support for hand/finger tracking, body tracking, and face tracking" media?
• "Support for various Meta extensions such as hand models, render models, and scene discovery" blockquote
• "Support for various Meta extensions such as hand models, render models, and scene discovery" text

[coppolaemilio]

I did a review and I like this way much better. There are a couple things that I would like to know more.
What are you using all those js files (gsap@3.12.5) they seem to be A LOT of files.
I also see that you added many font files, don't we have those already hosted? Or are you adding them because you needed different weights or styles?

I have a bunch of design updates I would like to make. For instance, you are using pure black for the font, the style is bright by default, and there is no dark theme version of it. Should I leave the feedback here or do you want me to send a commit to the repo directly?

[Calinou]

I also see that you added many font files, don't we have those already hosted? Or are you adding them because you needed different weights or styles?

It may be worth switching to a variable font file, so we only need to ship a single file to support all weights (including in-between weights that were previously not supported). These are pretty well-supported by now.

Not all fonts exist in variable form yet, but you might be able to find one for Montserrat.

[adamscott]

What are you using all those js files (gsap@3.12.5) they seem to be A LOT of files.

I didn't want to install NPM in the project, so I took the package itself and put it here, since I'm using a <script type="module">. But I think I'll create a min version of the files instead, so that will change.

I also see that you added many font files, don't we have those already hosted? Or are you adding them because you needed different weights or styles?

Yes, it's for the missing weights and styles.

I have a bunch of design updates I would like to make. For instance, you are using pure black for the font, the style is bright by default, and there is no dark theme version of it. Should I leave the feedback here or do you want me to send a commit to the repo directly?

Sure, go ahead, and commit away!

[adamscott]

It may be worth switching to a variable font file, so we only need to ship a single file to support all weights (including in-between weights that were previously not supported). These are pretty well-supported by now.

Good idea, I'll install one.

Not all fonts exist in variable form yet, but you might be able to find one for Montserrat.

There's two for Montserrat, italic and standard. I think that I should be able to convert the variable TrueType font to WOFF2.

[coppolaemilio]

Sent my first commit, but there's a lot more to be done.

Changes:

• There were many single use variables that were not really necessary, so I moved them to the context where they should be. If you want to move them back to a variable for some reason you can but use css variables instead of scss ones to make it easier to use them on media queries for light/dark themes.
• Laid the initial ground for the dark theme, but still some things need to be fixed. Left the one that was default before to be the light one.
• Made the 4.2 and 4.1 span elements less prominent like the bar.
• Inverted the order of the download and the donate cards. Download should go first, donate always later.
• Added a bit more spacing on the header so it doesn't look too overwhelming.
• Removed unnecessary copy "gaps". We should lead content first instead of make a lot of "TODO: replace me" elements. If we don't have anything to say, we shouldn't have to make copy to service the design, the design should service the content instead.
• Tweaked the size of some fonts, it was too big and since there isn't too much room for titles, most were a single word per line, which makes it really hard to read.
• I moved the before text to the html since not all screen readers can read ::before elements set in css.
• Swapped place for web exports and layers cards so that it is better balanced. Like we had it before made it too heavy on videos on the left and too boring on the right.

To do on further updates:

• It is probably better to remake the markup of the download section and to show only the OS that it matters to the user. Showing Windows, Mac, and Linux there is a bit too much.
• The background for the Donate page will have to change a bit.
• Dark theme colored titles don't have enough contrast.
• the pink + green color combination looks really bad, should look at an alternative there, same with orange + teal.

[adamscott]

It now shows the current OS only.

[adamscott]

Added a little bit more contrast to highlighted text vs the background.

Before

After

[RandomShaper]

There's something else that, despite maybe not as exciting (because it's one of those things that you only notice when they malfunction), is worth mentioning: multiple threading enhancements; notably, more optimized and stable multi-threaded resource loading.

[MurderVeggie]

Mostly language knitpicks, but also two raised flags in general.

1. the highlight class should be used more sparingly, and the words you choose need to be directly related to the feature and stand strong on their own, e.g. "audio resources" and not "your ears"

2. the c-titles are lowkey confusing, with the way they are formatted they seem more like subtitles to the c-blockquote, and I wouldn't have guessed them to be clickable either. you used them inconsistently throughout the page yourself, sometimes describing the area you are going to talk about (I changed all of them to match this as much as I could) and sometimes being full explanatory sentences

Lastly, since I couldn't find the matching code for this, please change Get yourself a copy of Godot 4.3… for free! to a less easily misunderstood CTA

[dalexeev]

1. Inline code in light theme looks a bit strange, like you pasted screenshots from Godot editor as images. If it's not too much trouble, could you please adjust the background color for light theme?

2. Some inline code is highlighted and some is not.

Not only keywords and annotations are highlighted, but also some regular methods.

3. Some cards contain changes from several authors at once, for example here the highlighting was added by me, and the copy button is Mickeon's. While the "Read more" link only directs to my PR.

4. The image for "Documentation pages of the editor can now link to themselves" is incorrect, godotengine/godot#91537 added 🔗 links to the online documentation, not to the built-in help. The description is also incorrect.

5. "Support for deprecated and experimental features" should be "Support for deprecated and experimental messages" or something like this. Support for deprecated/experimental marks in GDScript documentation was added in 4.2. In 4.3 we added the ability to provide messages to both core and GDScript documentation.

6. "GDScript circular dependencies between scenes and scripts" should be placed higher. In my opinion, this is a more important change, along with "Binary tokenization on export". And "is not operator" card should be smaller as it has little content.

7. There was also a notable PR from Hilderin fixing many class_name issues. It was merged after beta 1, so it wasn't included in that article. But it's probably worth mentioning.

• Fix synchronization of global class name godot#92303

8. The description for "Built-in methods and utility functions usable as Callable" can be improved. In my opinion, built-in methods are more important than utility functions. Users often faced the problem that Signal, Callable, and Array methods cannot be used directly and a lambda function is required as a wrapper. In 4.3 this was overcome.

9. Improved array export is no less important than @export_storage and @export_custom. Perhaps we could combine all three export changes into one card, but this is subject to the multiple author attribution problem (point 3).

• Allow @exported Arrays to set property hints for their elements godot#82952

10. There is a missing background on some cards and headers (I don't know if anyone reported this above). There's also a weirdly highlighted exclamation mark.

Screenshots

[clayjohn]

WIP review. Still need to do rendering copy

[clayjohn]

TODO

[clayjohn]

Some recommended content for the rendering section as well as some corrections for the existing content.

[MurderVeggie]

Important rephrasings for marketing purposes

[adamscott]

3. Some cards contain changes from several authors at once, for example here the highlighting was added by me, and the copy button is Mickeon's. While the "Read more" link only directs to my PR.

@dalexeev I found a fix for this issue, will correct it. I think I'll separate your features as they aren't as close as I thought.

Edit: no, finally, it's alright. I mixed up two features.

reworking the rest together

[MurderVeggie]

First batch done

[dsnopek]

These are the points that the XR team decided we wanted to call out for the release at our meeting a couple days ago:

• Composition layers to allow 2D viewports to be displayed at much higher quality
• Support for Meta XR Simulator on Windows and MacOS
• Scene discovery and spatial anchors on Meta headsets
• Standardized and enhanced support for hand, body, and face tracking
• Improvements to performance, foveated rendering, VRS, MSAA, passthrough, OpenXR frame loop and more

And here is an animated GIF that I made to go along with the first point about composition layers:

No obligation to use it! It was the best I managed to capture attempting to show off the difference, but I know it's not the most visually stunning thing :-)

Other members of the XR team are attempting to some media to go along with the other points as well.

[MurderVeggie]

5th batch of changes

[dalexeev]

@adamscott Thanks for the corrections, looks really good! 👍 It might be worth adding an image for the "Link to specific class references directly" card, as the text description may not be clear enough.

[MurderVeggie]

member feedback & last batch of changes

[adamscott]

@adamscott Thanks for the corrections, looks really good! 👍 It might be worth adding an image for the "Link to specific class references directly" card, as the text description may not be clear enough.

@dalexeev Done!

[dsnopek]

Some notes on the latest text in the XR section

[dsnopek]

Some notes about the GDExtension section

[akien-mga]

I believe you're missing this for the download links to actually work, and 4.3 to be featured on the homepage:

diff --git a/_data/versions.yml b/_data/versions.yml
index dcad32804..396a46c36 100644
--- a/_data/versions.yml
+++ b/_data/versions.yml
@@ -1,8 +1,12 @@
 - name: "4.3"
-  flavor: "rc3"
-  release_date: "8 August 2024"
-  release_notes: "/article/release-candidate-godot-4-3-rc-3/"
+  flavor: "stable"
+  release_date: "15 August 2024"
+  release_notes: "/releases/4.3/"
+  featured: "4"
   releases:
+    - name: "rc3"
+      release_date: "8 August 2024"
+      release_notes: "/article/release-candidate-godot-4-3-rc-3/"
     - name: "rc2"
       release_date: "1 August 2024"
       release_notes: "/article/release-candidate-godot-4-3-rc-2/"
@@ -41,7 +45,6 @@
   flavor: "stable"
   release_date: "17 April 2024"
   release_notes: "/article/maintenance-release-godot-4-2-2-and-4-1-4/"
-  featured: "4"
   releases:
     - name: "rc3"
       release_date: "12 April 2024"

[clayjohn]

Just a small typo. I reviewed all the rendering and XR changes and they look great!

[MurderVeggie]

typos and such, as well as feedback from @dsnopek & @raulsntos

[MurderVeggie]

feedback by @Riteo

[adamscott]

I believe you're missing this for the download links to actually work, and 4.3 to be featured on the homepage:

@akien-mga Done!

[coppolaemilio]

massive work everyone 😭 🙏