The impending release of WordPress 3.6 has been pushed back one more week to April 29. At this time, WordPress 3.6 is not yet feature complete (meaning that all intended new features have not been entirely finished), so the decision was made to push the first beta release back two weeks to March 27 and the final release back one week to April 29. This will allow the team time to focus on finalizing the in-progress new features so that they (and the brave folks who enjoy running beta software) can simply focus on testing and bug fixing rather than polishing up partial features.

Since the announcement of WordPress 3.6’s areas of focus, there has been an incredible amount of progress in just a short amount of time. Menus have received a simplified UI by way of breaking elements up into two separate screens, a few extra hooks, and some accessibility tweaks. Post Formats will be getting some UI tweaks around theme usage and expectations of data. Editorial Flow will focus on how custom statuses relate to post types, the transition between statuses, and working with existing statuses. Autosave will focus on how to safely lock a post and still allow user control, autosaving to the browser’s local storage, and offering better warnings for login expirations. Revisions will focus on author attribution issues and improved usability. If you aren’t already following along with the Make WordPress Core blog, I highly recommend doing so now, especially if you’re a plugin or theme developer, or just […]

Development on WordPress 3.6 has taken off like a rocket, and six areas of focus have already been defined. The Post Formats UI will be getting a major usability overhaul, lead by Helen Hou-Sandi. Autosave and Post Locking will be getting some new love, so you’ll hopefully never lose your posts again, lead by Andrew Ozz. The Editorial Flow experience will be getting a major overhaul too, lead by Daniel Bachhuber, so we can probably expect some bits of Edit Flow to make an appearance. Revisions will be getting some improvements, particularly in author attribution and comparing diffs, lead by Peter Westwood. Menus will be seeing some usability improvements, lead by Dave Martin. Distraction-Free Writing will be getting more visibility, a smoother experience, more features, and some overall polish. A leader for this project has yet to be chosen. If you aren’t already following along with the Make WordPress Core blog, […]

WordPress 3.5 has been out for a little over a week and downloaded over 2 million times, and the team all ready to start focussing on the next major release. The development on WordPress 3.6 will be lead this time by WordPress veteran Mark Jaquith, who is planning to focus this release on content editing improvements, listing “revisions, autosave, workflow, [and] editing modes” as suggested areas of focus. This is just his suggestion at this time, and a planning meeting in early January will further narrow down the focus to specifics. Mark is also looking for a backup lead, who will help with “the planning, execution, and delivery of the release” and otherwise cover for Mark if he is unavailable. If you have experience with WordPress core development, apply now!