WordPress 3.6 is nice

That’s pretty much the tl;dr of this post: WordPress 3.6 is nice. Automattic really stepped up their game for this release, rolling out features that I’ve been hoping for since I started WordPress development. I’ve been playing with the beta on my local server, and I have to say I’m impressed. Most of the features in the rollout are user-experience oriented, which is something I always felt was lacking from the admin side. Here’s a quick rundown of some new features that might have you jumping for joy:

Post formats

3.6 comes with post formats that have their own UI; most importantly, though, is theme authors have access to templating functions to access the data. This will make for a more pleasing user experience for your (read: my) clients. Example for a portfolio post: perhaps instead of creating a custom post type, one could just extend the post format to include a portfolio post type and extend the templating functions for this type.

Autosave

Posts are now saved locally, which is an awesome thing. Not too much that needs to be said on that one.

Post locking

This is a great feature for a site that has multiple authors / content providers. A “lock” icon will appear if a user is currently editing a post, and will kick them off the post if they are idle for too long.

Revisions

FINALLY. WordPress’s revision feature has been lacking quite a bit, in my opinion. This new rollout features a diff comparison (think git), a slider that “scrubs” through history, and more. Never again wonder which revision is the right one—you’ll be able to see exactly what was added / removed in previous versions! This one’s a godsend.

Other features

The twentythirteen theme is very nice; it’s fully responsive and takes full advantage of the new post formats feature. From a personal standpoint, the theme is a bit too opinionated, but I can see this being important for quality control when dealing with clients. If you’d like to try out 3.6 beta now, hit the download here!