The newest version of WordPress dropped last night. I saw the notification from the 8BIT team as they were making their update installs to begin testing and wrangling this latest piece of WordPress candy.
I’m lookin’ and I’m a likin’!
WordPress 3.3 – “Sonny”
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As an everyday user of WordPress, the biggest thing that’s going to jump out at you is the new “Pointers Feature” and the condensed file uploader. Finally, WordPress will detect the file type, so you’ll see the upload button is looking a little lonely, now. It makes me wonder if this will lead to some bigger changes, next.
WordPress 3.3 even has an updated media loader:
You can select your files or drag and drop.
Very cool.
The upload meters have been visually tweaked, too.
As for the Pointers Feature, it’s going to be great for theme and plugin developers:
Little fly-outs that can walk users through updates, changes, or how to use a plugin or theme for the first time!
Here’s a Pointer for the new WordPress 3.3 user bar (which is greatly improved):
Dashboard Design Updates Include:
- Flyout Sub Menus
- Responsive Admin Design – For tablet users, good bye app?
- Header & Admin Bar Combined – Tight!
- New Help Tabs
- New Feature Pointers – Very “OS-Like.”
- Post-Update Changelog – Click the big “W”
Content Tool Updates:
- Better Co-Editing – Thank God.
- Tumblr Importer – For those who want to stop pretending to blog.
- Improved Widget Handling – Now remembers how your widgets are configured based on Theme.
Nice Core Updates!
- Flexible Permalinks – FINALLY! No more performance penalties for skipping the date/cat in your slugs! #WINNING
- Less Slug Funk – Special characters in post titles won’t screw with your slugs anymore.
- jQuery & JQuery UI – The entire jQuery UI stack and latest jQuery version packed in!
- is_main_query() – Tells if a WP_Query object is the main WordPress query or secondary query.
- WP_Screen API – Create rich screens, add help documentation, adapt to screen contexts, and more.
- Editor API Overhaul – The new editor API automatically pulls in all the JS and CSS goodness for the editor, including multiple editors on the same page.
Conclusion
It looks like a good deal of the 3.3 improvements plays well into the hands of theme and plugin developers. There are plenty of slick new changes that really pushes WordPress into more of an app and less of a clunky CMS.
Are you making the switch right away or waiting a little while?
Learn more, download from WordPress.org, or update straight from your admin.
Jacob Gillespie says
I’m glad it’s finally released – it was fun working on the file uploader backend this past summer with GSoC, and the WordPress UI team really improved things in this latest release.
Eric Dye says
Awesome!
Mark Robinson says
I’m loving everything bar the fly-out menus but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
Eric Dye says
Yeah. They’re so-so. I know what you mean.
Jason Whitehorn says
We were updating http://www.gotworship.net and got the dreaded “Update Database” blank wp-admin screen. Found the new db version of 3.3 and manually changed it in PHPMyAdmin. Now I’m back in business.
Loving it so far. I like the neatness of the flyout navi on the side. Its a BIG step up!
Eric Dye says
Dude! Really? This latest update seems to be upsetting far more apple carts than usual. Glad you got it fixed!