WordPress 3.4 Beta 2 has been released. Since the first beta, there have been over 60 bug fixes and adjustments based on testing a feedback. As before, this is not yet meant for live sites, but please do take a few swings at it on a test installation, especially if you are a plugin or theme developer. If you find any bugs, please report them, and contact the support forums if you need any help.

WordPress 3.4 Beta 1 has been released. As always, this is still in development and not meant for use on live sites, but the team is planning for a final release in May if all goes as planned. This beta includes a few notable additions over the current stable release, including a new theme customizer and previewer, the ability to select header and background images from the library, support for flexible custom header image sizes, and a much improved theme browser with the ability to install child themes from the official directory. This is not yet meant for live sites, but please do take a few swings at it on a test installation. If you find any bugs, please report them, and contact the support forums if you need any help.

Twenty Twelve, the next great WordPress default theme, has unfortunately been removed from the 3.4 development cycle and pushed back to 3.5. There is no specific reason given for the change, but it seems likely that the team would rather focus on the core functions as WordPress 3.4 draws closer to its inevitable April release. If you already have Twenty Twelve activated and are using trunk, make sure that you activate another theme before upgrading to the latest, as Twenty Twelve will be removed. If you want to continue to use Twenty Twelve, you can grab it from GitHub for now.