WordPress 3.3 Beta 3 has been released. WordPress 3.3 is quickly on its way to its first release candidate. New features have been frozen, and over 200 fixes have been made since the last beta release. Plugin and theme authors are encouraged to test their code against the latest beta release, especially if their plugins or themes use jQuery in core as that has been upgraded to the 1.7 release.

WordPress 3.3 Beta 1 has been released. While this release isn’t ready for live usage yet, it’s time for plugin and theme developers to test their products against the upcoming 3.3 release, and time for you curious folks with test installations to get a sneak peek at what’s new. Along with a few miscellaneous fixes, WordPress 3.3 adds a new media uploader, an improved admin bar, and fancy fly-out menus in the Dashboard. Users of this first beta release are encouraged to report any bugs that they find and visit the support forums for help as necessary.

The plans for WordPress 3.3 have been laid. There’s a lot to get done before the potential November 15th release date, but it seems like we can definitely look forward to an improved media uploader, an informative welcome screen for first-time users, improved Dashboard performance, further admin bar improvements, permalink performance improvements, partial build update improvements, and various API improvements. If you can’t wait for WordPress 3.3, or just want to contribute to your favorite blogging platform, now is the perfect time to get involved!

Now that WordPress 3.2 is out of the way, the development schedule for WordPress 3.3 has been posted. We can look forward the overall enhancements and fixes to be confirmed next week on July 27th, with the first beta possibly landing on September 21st, and a potential final release date of November 15th. If you have been on the sidelines about contributing to WordPress, now’s the time to get involved. Find a ticket to fix, submit a patch for your own feature request, or just help out around the forums and documentation. No matter what you choose to do, make this the first release where you can proudly say, “I helped with that.”