WordPress 3.5 is set to be launched in December. Before its release, beta version has been released. It is quite obvious that the beta version is not meant to be run on production site. Here the work is still in progress and beta version has been made available just to let the users know what new features are there for them. The developers can run the beta version locally on their computers, work on various modules and they can suggest if some bugs or problems are there and in a manner the developers can help the wordpress team to make the new version successful.
The WordPress team concentrated on improving the already existing WordPress features and removed features that are no longer popular in the new version.
New features of WordPress 3.5:
- Appearance: The appearance has been made more appealing which is helpful for the new developers. The welcome screen now consists of the facility to customize the site where we can change the Site title & tagline, colors, background image, front page display at one go. The ‘change your theme completely’ link directly redirects to the Themes page from where we can select the theme totally customized by a developer. Here we have the option to write a first blog post, add a new about page, modify widgets, create or modify existing WordPress navigation menu and link to the new overhauled WordPress Media manager.
A new color picker. And the all-HiDPI (retina) dashboard have also been added. - Media : Media in a new and more sleeky look has been made available with the new version.
- Accessibility: Keyboard navigation and screen reader support have both been improved.
- Plugins: We can browse and install plugins marked as favorites on WordPress.org, directly from the dashboard.
- Mobile: It’ll be easier to link up your WordPress install with mobile apps available in wordpress database, as XML-RPC is now enabled by default.
- Links: The Link Manager has been removed from the wordpress sidebar in new installs because they were obsolete. A plugin named ‘Link manager is available to manage the links. In WordPress 3.5, the Link Manager (which some use to build blogrolls) will be disabled by default. If we have links when we update, it’ll still be there. But we can use this plugin to ensure it will always be there, even if we update to a later version of WordPress or remove all of the current links.
There are even more under the hood changes with the new WordPress 3.5 version, but most probably you won’t even notice them.
Changes relevant for developers in wordpress 3.5:
- External libraries updated: TinyMCE 3.5.6. SimplePie 1.3. jQuery 1.8.2. jQuery UI 1.9 (and it’s not even released yet). They have also added Backbone 0.9.2 and Underscore 1.3.3, and one can use protocol-relative links when enqueueing scripts and styles.
- WP Query: We can now ask to receive posts in the order specified by post__in.
- XML-RPC: New user management, profile editing, and post revision methods. We’ve also removed AtomPub.
- Multisite: switch_to_blog() is now used in more places, is faster, and more reliable. One can now use multisite in a subdirectory, and uploaded files no longer go through ms-files (for new installs).
- TinyMCE: API support for “views” has been added which is used to offer previews and interaction of elements from the visual editor.
- Posts API: Major performance improvements when working with hierarchies of pages and post ancestors. Also, one can now “turn on” native custom columns for taxonomies on edit post screens.
- Comments API: Search for comments of a particular status, or with a meta query (same as with WP_Query).
- oEmbed: They have added support for a few oEmbed providers, and they now handle SSL links.
Along with all this, a brand new theme has also been introduced named “Twenty twelve”. It has been made available for download on WordPress Theme Directory (http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/twentytwelve). The 2012 theme for WordPress is a fully responsive theme that looks great on any device. Features include a front page template with its own widgets, an optional display font, styling for post formats on both index and single views, and an optional no-sidebar page template. One with a custom menu, header image, and background has been shown below.
