New WordPress 2.8 Released

WordPress 2.8 has just been released..

Well, i just saw on the admin panel of wordpress that wordpress v2.8 is ready for public, so i just had to upgrade as soon as possible.

I haven’t got the time to browse for every single feature, but i did notice the plugin manager seems to have improved and it sure looks faster to install and upgrade your wordpress plugins.

The most notable addition would seem to be the ability to browse themes from within the WordPress Dashboard. With the Theme Browser you can specify the color you want, how many columns there should be, and fixed or flexible width. You can then select and install themes that you like quickly, without leaving the Dashboard.

Major New Improvements (WordPress blog)

First and foremost, WordPress 2.8 is way faster to use. We have changed the way WordPress does style and scripting.

The core and plugin updaters in previous versions 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 click from the comfort of your WordPress dashboard.

If you make edits or tweaks to themes or plugins from your dashboard, you’ll appreciate the new CodePress editor which gives syntax highlighting to the previously-plain editor. Also there is now contextual documentation for the functions in the file you’re editing linked right below the editor.

If you were ever frustrated with widgets before, this release should be your savior. We’ve completely redesigned the widgets interface (which we didn’t have time to in 2.7) to allow you to do things like edit widgets on the fly, have multiple copies of the same widget, drag and drop widgets between sidebars, and save inactive widgets so you don’t lose all their settings. Developers now have access to a much cleaner and robust API for creating widgets as well.

Finally you should explore the new Screen Options on every page. 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 widgets instead of the two it has by default. On other pages you can change how many items show per page.

Highlights

• New drag-and-drop widgets admin interface and new widgets API
• Syntax highlighting and function lookup built into plugin and theme editors
• Browse the theme directory and install themes from the admin
• Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns
• Allow configuring the number of items to show on management pages with an option in Screen Options
• Support timezones and automatic daylight savings time adjustment
• Support IIS 7.0 URL Rewrite Module
• Faster loading of admin pages via script compression and concatenation.

But that’s not all – If you would like to checkout the complete list of changes and features Click Here.