Something exciting is coming our way. In fact, it’ll arrive on March 27th. It’s the beta release of WordPress 3.6! This is great news as there are some really cool features shipping with 3.6.
And for those of us who don’t want to play around with the beta, the official release is scheduled for April 29th. Either way we’re not looking at waiting much longer for the next version of WordPress.
So, let’s dive in to what’s new shall we? Here we go!
Post Formats are getting a shiny new UI, which excites me greatly. Not that they were detestable, or even lackluster, in 3.5 but they look to be even more convenient in 3.6.
As you can see in the mockups, the post format options are in a drop down menu, right next to the post title. Very easy.
Also, 3.6 has cooked in some better previewing of the various post formats in the ‘add new post’ screen, saving you time, which everyone is a fan of.
Another feature I’m really looking forward to is autosave! Am I the only one that has lost an entire post due to browser crash, cookies issues, or the dastardly power failure!?
It’s a terrible feeling, I get mad just thinking about it. 3.6 plans on using browser storage for autosaves and then syncing back with WordPress at the next available opportunity.
So if your browser crashes, your internet goes down or your power goes out you should be covered. Of course you could avoid these issues by composing your content outside of WordPress, but built in autosave is a nice feature that I’ll be glad to have…just in case!
A slight feature update, in my opinion, is the cleaned up UI for menus. I’m sure people with larger sites will appreciate this update but I don’t use menus enough for this tweak to matter much.
I do, however, appreciate the desire to clean up as much UI as possible.
There was one thing that I was really looking forward to in 3.6 that got trashed, Editorial Flow. I, along with the entire WP Daily team, was really looking forward to this being a baked in feature but I guess we’ll have to wait. Honestly, I’m a little upset that it didn’t make the 3.6 cut.
I thoroughly expect this feature to be in the next release.
While we may not get Editorial Flow in 3.6, we do get revisions. This should be enough to quell my ire as it will be a beneficial feature, especially for those that do a lot of editing, like…cough…me.
Along with 3.6 comes the Twenty Thirteen theme. Which has certainly ruffled a few feathers with it’s design. There are some things I like about Twenty Thirteen such as it’s use of the entire width of the screen. Each post format has its own unique, and bold, color that takes up the full width of the screen.
The content is still restricted to the usual column width but the full screen background color adds a unique flair to the theme.
I also like that it is such a departure from Twenty Eleven and Twenty Twelve. Kudos for going for it!
I don’t like that it’s only available on 3.6+, why not make it backwards compatible? I also don’t like the stock colors.
They are in a word, frightening. I get that they were going for it, which I applauded, but a different color palette could really make Twenty Thirteen shine. Good thing we can change those colors, right? I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what people can do with Twenty Thirteen once it is released.
What about you? Are you looking forward to any of these features? Let us know!
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