WordPress 2.7 RC1
I’ve been testing WordPress 2.7 since before the first Beta, but I wasn’t brave enough to install it on my main blog. Now that RC (Release Candidate) 1 is out, I feel more comfortable about using it for non-testing purposes, so I’ve installed it here. At some point, I’d like to do a review of what features I like best about 2.7, but for now I just wanted to post a short message so that if anything becomes broken, you’ll know why.
WP 2.7 is an interesting move forward. I like the direction that they’re going with the admin interface and I’m glad that this move doesn’t seem nearly as divisive as the move from 2.3 – 2.5
Some of the features that I find the most appealing are:
Improved admin design
Threaded comments (often requested feature by clients)
Quick post/page edit
Mass post/page edit
My favorite feature is probably the expanding navigation on the left instead of the old navigation along the top. I’ve found it cuts page loads almost in half!
The most complaint/argument I’ve seen over 2.7 has to do with its version number (many argued that it should be 3.0 since it incorporated so many changes to the admin interface). I found it pretty funny how much people seemed to be bothered by that.
It was interesting listening to Jane Wells talk about some of the usability enhancements made in 2.7 in the Weblog Tools Collection Podcast a month or so back. It helped me appreciate some of the features I might not have noticed otherwise.
I like the new navigation scheme, but I’m sure I’ll be installing a plugin that modifies it at some point.
The version number is something I found interesting as well. Reports from Matt (Mullenweg) say that they’re not doing version number jumps anymore. They jumped from 2.3 to 2.5, but they won’t be jumping to 3.0 until after 2.9. That means we could have a few major iterations and then see another new admin interface at 3.2-3.3.
The usability testing they did with the new WordPress admin included some pretty extensive stuff. If I remember correctly, they actually did some laser eye tracking, which is pretty awesome.