WordPress 2.8 brings to you Jazzes Themes and Widgets

Here you go, WordPress 2.8 has been released and now available for download. It is yet another fit release which brings with it improvements to themes, widgets. Besides that speed gets an improvement overall. The team has fixed more than 790 bugs.

Once you have downloaded it and start to use it. Initially you will feel that it is quite similar to 2.7 and you might say to yourself “Why did I even bother to download WordPress 2.8.”  But that is where you are wrong. Dig in a little deeper and you will experience the difference and will begin to appreciate it.This is how they announced it the official WordPress blog:

I’m very excited to announce to everyone that the latest and greatest version of WordPress, version 2.8 “Baker,” is immediately available for download. 2.8 represents a nice fit and finish release for WordPress with improvements to themes, widgets, taxonomies, and overall speed. We also fixed over 790 bugs. This release is named in honor of noted trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker.

The WordPress 2.8 brings with it a lot of features bug fixes and much more. The list is quite exhaustive. To get hold of all the changes, please see the list of features which are more than 180 and the various changes and upgrades that are included in WordPress 2.8. As we informed you yesterday about a few of the features that were expected in the 2.8 version, among them was one that was related to widgets.

Among many features, one which attracts me particularly is the widgets interface. The widgets interface has gone through a redesign process. With the redesigned widgets interface, now you can

• Edit widgets on the fly
• Keep multiple copies of the same widget
• Drag and Drop widgets between sidebars
• Save inactive widgets to ensure that the settings are not lost.
• Developers get to play with a cleaner and robust API.

In relation to the future plans, this is what they had to say:

We’re already thinking hard about the next versions, 2.9 and 3.0. Keep an eye out for improved media handling, better dependency checking, versioning of templates and themes, and of course the fabled merging of WordPress and MU announced at WordCamp San Francisco two weeks ago.

It is impossible to discuss all the features that WordPress 2.8 has in its armor. So I would urge you to go and explore it yourself and I promise you it would be an enjoyable experience.