Tag: beta

WordPress 4.0 Beta 1 has been released. The final version of WordPress 4.0 is targeted to be released in on 27th August 2014.

What’s New?

• Previews of embedding via URLs in the visual editor and the “Insert from URL” tab in the media modal. Try pasting a URL (such as a WordPress.tv or YouTube video) onto its own line in the visual editor. (#28195, #15490)
• The Media Library now has a “grid” view in addition to the existing list view. Clicking on an item takes you into a modal where you can see a larger preview and edit information about that attachment, and you can navigate between items right from the modal without closing it. (#24716)
• We’re freshening up the plugin install experience. You’ll see some early visual changes as well as more information when searching for plugins and viewing details. (#28785, #27440)
• Selecting a language when you run the installation process. (#28577)
• The editor intelligently resizes and its top and bottom bars pin when needed. Browsers don’t like to agree on where to put things like cursors, so if you find a bug here, please also let us know your browser and operating system. (#28328)
• We’ve made some improvements to how your keyboard and cursor interact with TinyMCE views such as the gallery preview. Much like the editor resizing and scrolling improvements, knowing about your setup is particularly important for bug reports here. (#28595)
• Widgets in the Customizer are now loaded in a separate panel. (#27406)
• We’ve also made some changes to some formatting functions, so if you see quotes curling in the wrong direction, please file a bug report.

Download: WordPress 4.0 Beta 1

WordPress 3.9 Beta 1 has been released!

Changes

• We updated TinyMCE, the software powering the visual editor, to the latest version. Be on the lookout for cleaner markup. Also try the new paste handling — if you paste in a block of text from Microsoft Word, for example, it will no longer come out terrible. (The “Paste from Word” button you probably never noticed has been removed.) It’s possible some plugins that added stuff to the visual editor (like a new toolbar button) no longer work, so we’d like to hear about them (#24067). (And be sure to open a support thread for the plugin author.)
• We’ve added widget management to live previews (the customizer). Please test editing, adding, and rearranging widgets! (#27112) We’ve also added the ability to upload, crop, and manage header images, without needing to leave the preview. (#21785)
• We brought 3.8?s beautiful new theme browsing experience to the theme installer. Check it out! (#27055)
• Galleries now receive a live preview in the editor. Upload some photos and insert a gallery to see this in action. (#26959)
• You can now drag-and-drop images directly onto the editor to upload them. It can be a bit finicky, so try it and help us work out the kinks. (#19845)
• Some things got improved around editing images. It’s a lot easier to make changes to an image after you insert it into a post (#24409) and you no longer get kicked to a new window when you need to crop or rotate an image (#21811).
• New audio/video playlists. Upload a few audio or video files to test these. (#26631)

Developer Related Changes

• The load process in multisite got rewritten. If you notice any issues with your network, see #27003.
• We now use the MySQL Improved (mysqli) database extension if you’re running a recent version of PHP (#21663). Please test your plugins and see that everything works well, and please make sure you’re not calling mysql_* functions directly.
• Autosave was refactored, so if you see any issues related to autosaving, heartbeat, etc., let us know (#25272).
• Library updates, in particular Backbone 1.1 and Underscore 1.6 (#26799). Also Masonry 3 (#25351), PHPMailer (#25560), Plupload (#25663), and TinyMCE (#24067).
• TinyMCE 4.0 is a major update. Please see TinyMCE’s upgrade guide and our implementation ticket for more. If you have any questions or problems, please open a thread in the support forums.

Download: WordPress 3.9 Beta 1

Wow that was quick, WordPress 3.8 Beta 1 has been released and the final release is targeted for Thursday, 12th December 2013!

I am looking forward to the new admin UI!

• The new admin design, especially the responsive aspect of it. Try it out on different devices and browsers, see how it goes, especially the more complex pages like widgets or seldom-looked-at-places like Press This. Color schemes, which you can change on your profile, have also been spruced up.
• The dashboard homepage has been refreshed, poke and prod it.
• Choosing themes under Appearance is completely different, try to break it however possible.
• There’s a new default theme, Twenty Fourteen.
• Over 250 issues closed already.

Download: WordPress 3.8 Beta 1

Looks like when I am in Thailand for a holiday over the weekends, WordPress 3.7 Beta 1 is released! WordPress 3.7 will be a short one, with its final version coming in October 2013 and immediately after that, WordPress 3.8 will be targeted for release by end of the year. WordPress 3.8 will be where most of the features are!

One of the features in 3.7 that I am looking for is “Automatic, background updates”. It updates itself in the background, just like Google Chrome! When is the last time you notice Google Chrome is updating? Not me!

3.7 Beta 1 will keep itself updated. That’s right — you’ll be updated each night to the newest development build, and eventually to Beta 2. We’re working to provide as many installs as possible with fast updates to security releases of WordPress — and you can help us test by just installing Beta 1 on your server and seeing how it works!

Some other stuff:

• If you’re running WordPress in another language, we’ll automatically download any available translations for official WordPress importers and the default themes. (More to come here.)
• Our password meter got a whole lot better, thanks to Dropbox’s zxcvbn library. Again, subtle but effective. Strong passwords are very important!
• Search results are now ordered by relevance, rather than just by date. When your keywords match post titles and not just content, they’ll be pushed to the top.
• Developers should check out the new advanced date queries in WP_Query. (#18694)

WordPress 3.6 Beta 1 has been released! The final version of WordPress 3.6 is expected to ship on 29th April 2013.

To start off, WordPress 3.6 will ship with a new default theme, named Twenty Thirteen.

What’s New In WordPress 3.6

• Post Formats: Post Formats now have their own UI, and theme authors have access to templating functions to access the structured data.
• Twenty Thirteen: We’re shipping this year’s default theme in our first release of the year. Twenty Thirteen is an opinionated, color-rich, blog-centric theme that makes full use of the new Post Formats support.
• Audio/Video: You can embed audio and video files into your posts without relying on a plugin or a third party media hosting service.
• Autosave: Posts are now autosaved locally. If your browser crashes, your computer dies, or the server goes offline as you’re saving, you won’t lose the your post.
• Post Locking: See when someone is currently editing a post, and kick them out of it if they fall asleep at the keyboard.
• Nav Menus: Nav menus have been simplified with an accordion-based UI, and a separate tab for bulk-assigning menus to locations.
• Revisions: The all-new revisions UI features avatars, a slider that scrubs through history, and two-slider range comparisons.

Download: WordPress 3.6 Beta 1