I want to correct the information in my post – the WordPress 3.8.1 upgrade did not resolve the issue. I only thought it did, when I replicated the fix/upgrade twice. However after starting a new session, I noticed the issue is still present, even in WP 3.8.1. One of our developers took a closer look and found the following.
In the PHP file where the original state of the HTML for the screen options UI that is experiencing the issue is formed you’ll see that the class=”hidden” is present.
wp-admin/includes/screen.php (line 917)
<div id="screen-options-wrap" class="hidden" tabindex="-1" aria-label="<?php esc_attr_e('Screen Options Tab'); ?>">
They have this class tied up to the following CSS:
wp-admin/css/wp-admin.css (line 234 thru 243)
.hidden,
.js .closed .inside,
.js .hide-if-js,
.no-js .hide-if-no-js,
.js.wp-core-ui .hide-if-js,
.js .wp-core-ui .hide-if-js,
.no-js.wp-core-ui .hide-if-no-js,
.no-js .wp-core-ui .hide-if-no-js {
display: none;
}
So you can see that the ‘.hidden’ class (along with several others) has the property ‘display: none;’. This is perfectly fine and normal if they plan to toggle on and off the ‘.hidden’ class from the element. However they instead make use of jQuery’s ‘show()’ and ‘hide()’ methods and leave the ‘hidden’ class.
wp-admin/js/common.js (lines 99 thru 143)
screenMeta = {
element: null, // #screen-meta
toggles: null, // .screen-meta-toggle
page: null, // #wpcontent
init: function() {
this.element = $('#screen-meta');
this.toggles = $('.screen-meta-toggle a');
this.page = $('#wpcontent');
this.toggles.click( this.toggleEvent );
},
toggleEvent: function( e ) {
var panel = $( this.href.replace(/.+#/, '#') );
e.preventDefault();
if ( !panel.length )
return;
if ( panel.is(':visible') )
screenMeta.close( panel, $(this) );
else
screenMeta.open( panel, $(this) );
},
open: function( panel, link ) {
$('.screen-meta-toggle').not( link.parent() ).css('visibility', 'hidden');
panel.parent().show();
panel.slideDown( 'fast', function() {
panel.focus();
link.addClass('screen-meta-active').attr('aria-expanded', true);
});
},
close: function( panel, link ) {
panel.slideUp( 'fast', function() {
link.removeClass('screen-meta-active').attr('aria-expanded', false);
$('.screen-meta-toggle').css('visibility', '');
panel.parent().hide();
});
}
};
The use of these methods is also okay. The ‘show()’ and ‘hide()’ methods toggle the element’s display value between ‘display:none’ and ‘display:block’. The issue here is that WP used the ‘.hidden’ class to set the default display state and then use the Jquery toggle methods to adjust on the fly. However, this leaves the ‘.hidden’ class out there to snag itself in conflict against any CSS at play that uses the ‘visibility:hidden’ property instead of or in addition to ‘display:none’. Twitter Bootstrap for example, which GrabPress uses and is widely used across the web has the following declaration for ‘.hidden’:
.hidden {
display: none;
visibility: hidden;
}
So my recommendation to WP would be to have their JavaScript toggle on/off the class ‘hidden’ from the element rather than leaving it there. To have ‘hidden’ on a unhidden element just makes no sense, even semantically speaking. It might also be good for them to toggle both the ‘display’ property and the ‘visibility’ property of the element.
I’m going to have to post this somewhere else, as it seems this is a more generic WordPress issue, rather than a specific issue with the Twenty Fourteen theme. This issue also exists in some of the other default/common WordPress themes.
