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.

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.

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