WordPress 4.0 – Almost here!

The fine folks at WordPress have announced that  v4.0 is coming soon! Well, we knew that was going to happen! It has been officially been announced that the BETA version has become available for people to use. We are THAT much closer to seeing the real ‘usable’ version come to our websites.

The version of this software is still in development, so it is not recommend you run it on your live sites. You might want to consider setting up a test site just to play with the new version. To test WordPress 4.0, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”).

Here are some of the things that are coming in the new version:

• Previews of embedding via URLs in the visual editor and the “Insert from URL” tab in the media modal. You will probably be able to paste a URL (such as a WordPress.tv or YouTube video) onto its own line in the visual editor.
• The Media Library now has a “grid” view in addition to the existing list view. Clicking on an item takes you into a another window where you can see a larger preview and edit information about that attachment, and you can navigate between items right from the modal without closing it.
• The fine folks at WP are freshening up the plugin install experience. You’ll see some early visual changes as well as more information when searching for plugins and viewing details.
• You will be able to select a language when you run the installation process.
• The editor intelligently resizes and its top and bottom bars pin when needed.
• Some improvements have been made to how your keyboard and cursor interact with TinyMCE views such as the gallery preview. Much like the editor resizing and scrolling improvements, knowing about your setup is particularly important for bug reports here.
• Widgets in the Customizer are now loaded in a separate panel.

This is all very exciting! Remember, you don’t want to test this out on your live site – try it on a site that if you loose everything, you are ok 🙂 Or, just keep making a lot of backups 🙂