Orangescale.NET

Aug 26, 2008 / 9:34 pm

Upcoming WordPress 2.7

in Movable Type, Webdev, wordpress / tags: design, features, movabletype, wordpress, wordpress 2.7

I just downloaded new files for the upcoming WordPress 2.7, and gave it a try. You do not need to worry, because it will not be available in the next few weeks (Schedule: November 10, 2008). So, you do not need to upgrade near the future. I’ve wrote an initial post about WordPress 2.7 before. Here are some changes I found. This is not final, many features/designs might change later.

• Main navigation is on the sidebar (left sidebar). WordPress places dashboard navigation on the top. Most blog designs have a secondary elements on the sidebar, so this should not be a problem.
• Click-to-expand menu. Related to the changes on the navigation position, we can easily jump to other menu easier now. It’s a life-safer! Remember Ozh’s Admin Drop Down Menu plugin? Now, we can have the similar functionality with no plugins.
• A new primary menu added. Right now, it’s called “Utilities”. It has some submenus: Inbox, Tags, Categories, Link Categories, Users, Export and Import. Some of them reside under “Manage” tab in WordPress 2.6. About the “Inbox” menu, I’m still not sure about this. There are a list of items, and “Archives” page. Something to do with social networking? WordPress.com and bbPress BuddyPress?
• Batch entry editing. I want this feature, and this should be very helpful. Rather than editing post one by one, we can edit them in batch. It seems that it’s not ready yet. Movable Type already has this feature. We can assigns some posts in to some categories, tags, etc. If WordPress has it too, that should be great. Really. Also, (in WordPress 2.7, I hope) when we will be able display entries with excerpt from the dasboard. We have two options: “List view” and “Excerpt View”.
• Better Post composing screen. Compared to WordPress 2.6, here are some differences:
• • Common menu box on the right. We will have these box on the right sidebar: Publishing status (Published, Pending, Unpublished), Tags, Categories, and Media added to this post.
  • Posting elements controller. In some cases, we do not need some elements to be displayed. For example, you never use the Custom Fields part, you can easily remove it from the screen.

Again, this is not final. We might have them all available or improved in the coming release. Right now, I feel comfortable with these changes. Some other personal thoughts:

• I have been Movable Type user for long time before I switched back to WordPress. Movable Type interface is really great and easy to control. WordPress is growing and improving. [this is good]
• Managing a blog (posting, editing stuff, configuring settings) should be fun and easy thing to do. I hope the new designs will help bloggers (WordPress users).

I’m planning to see the changes from Subsversion. Just to get the newest changes and try them :)

• August 26th, 2008 • # 9:34 pm