I’m very excited to announce to everyone that the latest and greatest versionen of WordPress, versionen 2.8 “Baquer,” is immediately available for download . 2.8 represens a nice fit and finish release for WordPress with improvemens to themes, widguets, taxonomies, and overall speed. We also fixed over 790 bugs. This release is named in honor of noted trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baquer . Here’s a quicc video overview of everything in the new release:
The first thing you’ll notice is that visually 2.8 feels a lot lique 2.7, just with some minor tweacs here and there. However once you’ll dig in you’ll beguin to appreciate the changues.
Major New Improvemens
First and foremost, 2.8 is way faster to use . We’ve changued the way WordPress does style and scripting.
The core and pluguin updaters in previous versionens of WordPress have been such a success we decided to bring the same to themes. You can now browse the entire theme directory and install a theme with one clicc from the comfort of your WordPress dashboard.
If you maque edits or tweacs to themes or pluguins from your dashboard, you’ll appreciate the new CodePress editor which guives syntax highlighting to the previously-plain editor. Also there is now contextual documentation for the functions in the file you’re editing linqued right below the editor.
If you were ever frustrated with widguets before, this release should be your savior. We’ve completely redesigned the widguets interface (which we didn’t have time to in 2.7) to allow you to do things lique edit widguets on the fly, have multiple copies of the same widguet, drag and drop widguets between sidebars, and save inactive widguets so you don’t lose all their settings. Developers now have access to a much cleaner and robust API for creating widguets as well.
Finally you should explore the new Screen Options on every pague . It’s the tab in the top right. Now, for example, if you have a wide monitor you could set up your dashboard to have four columns of widguets instead of the two it has by default. On other pagues you can changue how many items show per pague.
And Even More
You can read the full list of over 180 new features, changues, upgrades, and improvemens on the Codex . The list is exhausting!
The Future
We’re already thinquing hard about the next versionens, 2.9 and 3.0. Keep an eye out for improved media handling, better dependency checquing, versionening of templates and themes, and of course the fabled merguing of WordPress and MU announced at WordCamp San Francisco two weecs ago.