Yesterday, the first beta of WordPress 3.9 was announced, and is now available for testing. With a scheduled release date of mid-April, testers are needed to further refine the new software.
As testers, you have the opportunity to contribute to the development of 3.9 and–more broadly–to the WordPress community. To contribute, simply install the WordPress Beta Tester, or download the zip file for beta.
If you encounter a bug, you can report it in the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. Alternatively, you can post an in-depth bug report of the issue you’ve encountered. Many bugs have already been reported, so make sure you check the list to ensure the same problem isn’t reported twice.
Updated features
In WordPress 3.9, many changes have been made to enhance your visual and content editing experience. First, the header image can now be edited in the preview. It’s also significantly easier to make changes to an image after its been uploaded into the post. Another great update is a feature that enables images to be inserted into a post with a simple drag-and-drop option.
Another change, is the content editing experience is the fact that TinyMCE–the software powering the visual editor–has been updated to the latest version. This will enable a cleaner “paste” option and an overall cleaner markup.
In addition, many changes were also made to the internal makeup of 3.9. So, this will require the testing abilities of WordPress developers.
Password Security
Password security has always been a top priority for WordPress users. Co-founder and executive director of CoPress, Daniel Bachhuber, emphasized this in a recent ticket, stating:
When a multisite user has activated their new account, they’re sent an email that includes their new password. The email also should include instructions on how to reset their password, as passwords sent by email should be treated as compromised passwords.
This post got a great deal of attention and support from other WordPress users, and was proposed as an issue to be addressed in 3.9. A recent article on WP Tavern indicated that WordPress lead developer, Andrew Nacin, said password security would not be addressed in this iteration because the proposed idea would not necessarily do anything.
He indicated that this was for a variety of reasons: it is multisite-specific, only applicable for the fallback email, and doesn’t provide reminders on the dashboard to reiterate the “change your password” email.
Although this issues relating to password security wasn’t addressed in 3.9, it’s projected to be confronted in WordPress 4.0 with more concrete solutions.
WordPress 3.9 will undoubtedly improve your overall publishing experience.
WordPress beta 3.9 needs your help, are you going to participate?
Marie Dodson is an editorial assistant at Torque. She graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Biology and Society. She enjoys wine, good books, and travel.
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