Mar
21
The first whispers of WordPress 3.2 have shown up on the WordPress development blog. A precise feature list is far from complete, but the first draft of ideas has been composed and discussed. The overall theme seems to be “faster and lighter”, with an emphasis on removing outdated technologies and speeding everything up. Bullet points discussed so far include:
- PHP 5.2.4 will be required. Additional PHP 5 features won’t be added; this release is only about dropping the old version of PHP. MySQL 5 will also be required.
- End of life for IE6 compatibility with the WordPress admin. Nothing will be removed at this point, but testing will stop happening for the admin and Internet Explorer 6.
- A fresh implementation of distraction free writing will replace the current fullscreen implementation. Inspiration will be drawn from WriteRoom, OmmWriter, and others.
- Upgrade improvements will be made, where only changed files will be upgraded.
- Various speed improvements to make WordPress faster under the hood.
WordPress shaman Mark Jaquith is in charge of this release, in his words to “[make] sure people stay on target and [make] sure we don’t try to slip ‘one more thing’ in”. Jaquith says the plan is to complete this release cycle faster than 3.1, and that an improved focus will help.
Timelines and assignments will be decided during this week’s developer chat on Wednesday. We’ll keep you up to date with the course of 3.2 development, of course, but in the meantime: what do you think about the plan for 3.2, so far?