WordPress 4.6 Beta 1 was released on June 2016 and has been getting consistent updates up till now. The current announced version is Beta 4 which is already available now. Its fully functioning date of release will be in August 2016, so be sure to check it out then. So without further ado, let’s find out what’s new.

So what’s in the new WordPress?

Like every new program that adds a new point one to its version number, WordPress 4.6 will be getting some fine updates that can already be seen and tested on its beta releases.

Partial Merge with Shiny Updates

Shiny Updates is a plugin that will let users install and update, plugins and themes without being redirected to the progress screen. Previously, every time a user added or installed a new theme or plugin, it would trigger a page load which led to some annoyance.

Before version 4.6, Shiny Updates was a standalone plugin where users would need to install it to manage other plugins and themes. Sounds redundant but that’s how it worked. Now it is being merged, integrated with WordPress as a permanent functionality. This is a wonderful update from a UX stand point, as it will alleviate our past frustrations with the platform.

 

Native System Fonts

Since 2013, WordPress used Open Sans as its system font. The latest version of WordPress will start to use an operating system’s (OS) system font instead, and will directly make the admin page load faster. On a UX perspective, this solves the confusion with mismatched fonts shown on the user’s screen.

 

Editor Improvements

Under the editor for WordPress, a number of improvements are coming along with 4.6. The auto-save feature now restore posts from browser backups and also auto-save even when the revisions have been disabled. This is a huge change because in the past, revisions that were disabled could not be used to restore points.

WordPress 4.6 will also instantly examine any URLs on your post to see if it is a working link or otherwise. If the link is broken or goes to an invalid page, it will turn to a red link instead of the usual working blue.

 

Standardized Metadata Registration

The registration of meta keys will be brought in using the  register_meta() function in the latest version of WordPress. It works similarly to the register_post_type() function and allows plugins and theme developers to use a standardized way to work with meta data. These meta data are stored with posts, users, comments, or terms object types (#35658).

 

Developer Changes

Here is the list of developer changes :

• New WP_Post_Type class (#36217), that changes $wp_post_types to an array of WP_Post_Type objects. Providing methods to handle post type supports, rewrite rules, meta boxes, hooks, and taxonomies.
• New WP_Term_Query Class (#35381), will provide a better structure for generating term queries.
• WP_Site_Query (#35791) and WP_Network_Query Classes (#32504), these two new classes allow for querying sites and networks with lazy loading used on multi-site networks.
• Language Packs (#34114, #34213) now have translations managed via throughtranslate.wordpress.org, have a higher priority and are loaded just-in-time.
• The Widgets API (#28216) was improved to support registering pre-instantiated widgets.
• Index definitions are now normalized by dbDelta() (#37583).
• Comments (#36906) can now be stored in a persistent object cache .
• External Libraries were updated to the latest versions – Masonry to 3.3.2 and imagesLoaded to 3.2.0 (#32802), MediaElement.js to 2.21.2 (#36759), and TinyMCE to 4.3.13 (#37225).
• REST API responses now include an auto-discovery header (#35580) and a refreshed nonce when responding to an authenticated response (#35662).
• Expanded Meta Registration API via register_meta() (#35658).
• Customizer – Improved API for setting validation (#34893, #36944).

 

We hope this has been an informative post for you. Some of us here are pretty hyped for the new version of WordPress and look forward to how we can use this for future projects.

Have anything to share on the new version of WordPress before it’s out? Drop us a comment down below and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Socials links are just below. Thank you.