Stalking the Wild 2.7
September 4, 2008
To track the day-to-day happenings of WordPress 2.7 development, head over to the Development Updates blog. We’ll be discussing the ongoing admin UI changes and the new features slated for 2.7. Add your comments and join in.
Here’s a quick rundown of some of the features that have already gone into 2.7.
- New admin UI based on the crazyhorse experimental UI branch with new menus and navigation
- New edit post page that allows dragging and dropping of meta boxes. Boxes can be expanded and collapsed as before and now also completely hidden.
- Ability to hide columns on the content index pages
- Inline editing of posts and pages on the content index pages
- Comments XMLRPC API (Who wants comment moderation on the iPhone? Me.)
- Reply to comments from the admin
- Keyboard hot keys for managing comments
- Threaded Comments and new wp_list_comments() API
- Sticky Posts
- Automatic plugin install and integrated plugin browser
- Automatic upgrade of WordPress
- HTTPOnly auth cookies
- New HTTP request API
- A new SSH2 filesystem abstraction for updates and installs over sftp
Not all of those features are complete yet, but they are getting close. We’re hoping to get a few more features like Theme update, install, and browsing done in time for 2.7.
what about the ‘inbox’ feature ?
Hi Ryan,
All these features are great but I have comments about the current 2.7/crazy horse version:
I think the vertical admin menu isn’t graphically harmonious because it break the horizontal overall feeling.
(other sub-menus, titles, lines…)
It not ergonomic because it repeat actions of buttons like “new post”, “dashboard” or “comments” of an other top menu.
Globally, we have too much admin menu (one top left, one top right, one vertical, one bottom left and hey! you forgot bottom right
)
Things seems complicated.
I think it’ll be better to build one global admin menu like the previous version, but “one click” ajaxed.
synthetic is more readable.
If not, the selected item (white in admin menu) need more padding. (the same as buttons “new post” or “visit site”).
WordPress admin is more and more powerful but it need to stay easy to use and understand.
In this way, the “hidden box” feature is very good.
Thanks
I am waiting for with the curiosity.
Thank you. =)
Let’s hope the new admin GUI works for more than just a few point releases.
Regardless, the new features look very promising. What could 3.0 possibly have in store for us?
How you will manage the automatic upgrade for localizated version?
ciao
It would be nice if the “plugin update” page will automatically go back to the “plugin” page after you successfully updated a plugin, instead of expecting you to click “plugins” again.
3.0? Hmm… voice recognition engine so you won’t have to type posts with your hands anymore
.
The admin is slowly becoming a portal to WordPress’s Extend site. Hmmm. It makes me wonder if the core will be bloated to a 5MB zipped archive when 3.0 comes.
Amen to that – love the improvements but you guys need to stick to one that works. It would help great many people
wp_page_menu()(is there any documentation for that yet?) and inline editing sound very cool.I think I’ll be digging a little further into trunk this weekend.
The Comments + XMLRPC feature is going to be great. I am amazed it has taken this long… not for WordPress, per se, but for any blogging platform! It’s been the big hole in remote admin.
Would be interesting if you could add the Quickpost plugin features into the Press it js….
Nah, the Sticky Posts is there. It would be very functional. But, I like the 2.3.x widgets user interface. We could manage the sidebar on one page only. Simple
Ah and about the admin GUI:
I particularly find the older WP versions’ GUI where you could find your drafts in the header, easier to use than the separate draft post segment.
My 2 cents
What’s up with the post editor in 2.6.2? Did someone remove the button to add links and stuff? It seems to be missing a few things….????
Hi great Post.
News Development of WordPress 2.7 in Spanish in http://www.calinsoft.com/tag/wordpress/
Nice Blog
Yay, more fodder for my “Future of WordPress” talk at WordCamp Birmingham
Really looking forward to 2.7. The backend UI design changes, reply-to-comments, and threaded comments are all pretty big changes. And of course the ability to browse and install plugins (and hopefully themes) will be huge. Plus being able to upgrade the WP core itself is going to make so many people happy.
Now… I just need to find time to make a patch for my ticket about the ability to rebrand everything, to improve the chances of it happening
OOOOHHHHH Sticky posts!!!
I’m already using wp-trunk and i think the admin ui is really better. Also the ability to permanently let specific fields in “write” be invisible is good for deploying wordpress for customers.
The feature to let a post “sticky” is good, but i think it would be better if we could be able to arrange the post order like we can do with pages. This would allow for more cms-like navigation. Of course it would have to be a hybrid sort order which combines date-order and manual order..
But thanks anyway. Looking forward to the release.
Cool. I’ve been using WordPress since January, version 2.3, at the time. I’ve enjoyed the updates, and 2.7 sounds like it could be the best one so far.
I’m especially looking forward to the new admin interface (I’ve been okay with the current one but I like the proposed changes more) and the new comments management as well as the installing of new plugins.
Looking forward to threaded comment and auto upgrade! Cheers!
I appreciatte all the effort put into this release. I’ve been using the trunk version since the inception of crazyhorse and I bleieve it is a step back in terms of simplicity and overall consistency. The admin feels quite bloated with panels, sub-panels, sub-sub-panels.
I believe the admin should be a section where you feel at ease… right now, I just want to leave it as soon as possible. It doesn’t feel like home anymore.
You’re gonna put the category selector back to the sidebar, right?
May I also as administrator of several sites using French versions of WordPress make a plea: that, even if the vast majority of WP installations are in English, that localised versions not be forgotten in the automatic upgrade function that is being introduced in 2.7!!! I will severely be disappointed if the developpers ignore this issue.
How about a fix for the annoying back and forth to place images into a blog.
Forcing someone to click add media, find location, search through a drop down and then go through 3 pages of images to place a single image… and then start over for the next image. That is my only complaint.
Aside from that, I am excited about all the new features!
Great effort, guys! Especially in making WordPress the best blogging platform ever, built with passionate people
I’ve been using the Ozh Admin Drop down menu plug-in, but a built-in great new UI is always welcomed
Sounds quite impressive. This will be a huge WordPress version.
Darn it. Just when I had built some features (in write/edit post page) for my WP 2.5 and WP 2.6.x theme, we’re about to see a revamped admin UI in 2.7.
Sigh. I hope it won’t be drastic changes enough to break my theme down.
That’s a good news! Especially I like the Automatic upgrade of WordPress feature. I thought if Simple Machines Forum has this feature, why WP guys cannot do this, now I see that they can
Just put an consistent effort into conserving vertical space for those of us that work on laptops. Scrolling field in scrolling windows don’t work. Put the category panel to the right as before and allow check boxes to be displayed all at once. NO SCROLLLING.
Make the name of blog smaller etc.{I know what blog I am editing. When in editor I am writing post. Minimize everything else. Menu takes up too much space.
The admin panel is for working not graphic display for printing or end user consumption. Optimize everything for that. The last few updates have really gone the opposite direction.
I wish we got to vote on versions of layout before they came out. I shudder when a new version come up; how are they going to make the UI worse.
Automated upgrade and plugin install – now WP will be truly my platform of choice!
Oh, yeah, and whatever #31 said – I want that with fries! BTW, the caption thingy has never worked for me, always have to go into HTML view and adjust the image tag.
Ryan, you guys made an iPhone app for WP, how about for Windows Mobile? You guys shouldn’t be biased towards iPhone & leave the rest of us out in cold!
These are all great features, but I’ve got to say that I’m interested in the prospect of the automatic upgrade the most. If that’s not incorporated into Crazyhorse, then I’m going to go nuts.
Personally, there was a lot I liked in the 1.x admin better than the 2.x menus. What was really lost was the great image formatting in posts. I hate the way it works now.
Don’t get me wrong, WP is fantastic, but I think that sometimes the UI goes “fancy” rather than better. I thought the old was cleaner, easier to understand and functioned better. I have feedback from users that they liked the old one better even after having used the new one extensively. I’m hoping 2.7 is cleaner and more intuitive.
I’m kind of new to WordPress, I would like to know every how often there are updates. Ive only used wordpress for 3 months and there have been 4 upgrades in this time, is this normal?
Seems like an awful lot of upgrading!!!