It feels like WordPress 4.4 was just launched a little while ago! Is it time for WordPress 4.5 already? Maybe the holiday season launch skewed my perception of time, but the next phase of WordPress’ ever evolving core really is just around the corner. Beta 1 and 2 of 4.5 are in the books, and by the time this article publishes beta 3 is scheduled to be as well. If you’re curious, you can take a look through the 4.5 project schedule, but all eyes are on April 12- barely a month away- for full release.
So what will we be seeing with WordPress 4.5? That’s what we’re here to take a look at. You can pick up a copy for your test site too if you like. Let’s poke around a bit and see what we can find…
WordPress 4.5 New & Upgraded Features
Upgrades to Visual Editor
These are really fun! 4.5 is bringing a new diversity of editing options to the visual editor. Most of these changes build on the inline editing introduced in WordPress 4.3. Check ‘em out:
More in-line formatting shortcuts
- Surrounding text in asterisks italicizes that text
- Surrounding text in two asterisks bolds the text
- Surrounding text in apostrophes indicates code
Inline link editing
No more popup every time you add a link! Ctrl+k anywhere and you’ll open an inline link editor rather than have a popup interrupt your workflow. Enter the link data and WordPress auto generates both the text and the link. No more typing the text, stopping, highlighting, and opening the link popup. Just do it all as you type!
Better Comment Moderation
In the current iteration of WordPress, when someone leaves a comment on your website, you get an email notification. When you approve, spam, or trash the new comment you’re whisked away to the comment moderation screen.
From the comment moderation screen you can view and moderate the new comment, but chances are you’re looking at a mess. Not only can you not edit the comment from here, the comment itself is displayed in one big, unformatted chunk with html elements sticking out every which way. Not the best user experience.
4.5 is correcting this! The new comment will appear fully formatted, and you can follow a link from there to edit the comment.
Support for Theme Logos
Jetpack introduced theme logo support back in 2014, and it’s become a popular enough feature to be ported over into WordPress core with 4.5.
Right now this feature can be found in the dashboard under Appearance>Customize>Site Identity. That may be changing prior to launch however, as UX testing has indicated that location as a not so user friendly spot. Considering the amount of time it took me to track this feature down, I’m going to tend to agree with them. Once you’ve found it though, it’s easy to use and nice to have around!
Site Previews in Mobile, Tablet, and Desktop Format
Hate having to track down the tablet (or wrestle it away from your teenager) to check how a test site displays on them running a new theme? Wish you could preview how your site is going to look on desktop, tablet, and mobile before the change is made?
You can soon. 4.5 is adding responsive previewing with the click of a button. Check out the screenshot below!
Better Image Scaling
WordPress 4.4 saw the introduction of responsive images. An 800×600 image might display fine on a desktop, but try looking at it on your phone… 4.4 fixed that by allowing images to scale to the device. 4.5 is upgrading this functionality. Images should be able to easily shrink up to 50% with little to no discernible quality loss.
Email Logins
Yes, you still have to remember your password to log in to your email… but! You can now log in to WordPress with your email. Email usernames are now (well, will be) a thing!
For Developers
There are also a handful of changes coming that will be of specific interest to developers. We won’t do more than outline them here, but if you’re interested in investigating further, wordpress.org has a listing of each of these changes, and those above, for both Beta 1 and Beta 2 by ticket number.
- Selective Refresh for rendering pieces of the customizer preview
- Backbone and Underscore updated to current
- Embed Templates have been split into parts and can be overridden by themes
- A new WP_Site class for managing Multisite
- Script loader, wp_add_inline_script(), for including inline JS.
We’re looking forward to WordPress 4.5 and hope you are too! Not only is WordPress growing, but our favorite CMS is staying healthy competitive with regular love and and a diversity of new features. Much thanks to all the folks who’ve put many long hours into making this possible!
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