A new chapter for WordPress, version 3.6
The development fore the new WordPress 3.6 version will be lead this time by WordPress veteran Mark Jaquith. He declares a introductory post :
I’d personally like the focus of the release to be about content editing (revisions, autosave, workflow, editing modes, etc).
So, we can expect some further improvements to those little dashboard features that make life easier.
Here is a schedule table for the new release:
| January 02-09, 2013 | Confirm proposed scope and secure team leads. |
| January 09, 2013 | Development begins. |
| March 13, 2013 | Hard freeze on feature development. Stop feature development; focus on testing and compatibility (supported platforms, browsers, RTL, accessibility, etc). Ship a Beta 1. |
| From this point on, no more commits for any new enhancements or feature requests in this release cycle, only bug fixes. Any enhancements/feature requests not completed and committed by this point will be punted to future. Please don’t get angry and complain when this happens; it’s necessary to get us to an on-time release. You can keep working on your pet ticket and have it ready for early 3.7. | |
| March 20, 2013 | Beta 2 |
| March 27, 2013 | Beta 3 |
| April 03, 2013 | Release Candidate 1 target date. String freeze. Any work is focused on regressions and blockers only. |
| April 10, 2013 | Release Candidate 2 |
| April 17, 2013 | Release Candidate 3 |
| April 22, 2013 | Target date for WordPress 3.6 launch. |
Revisions: The revisions tool will get a little TLC — bug fixes, better user interface, and adding visual representation of what was added/removed in each revision.
Post Formats: Post formats were introduced in WordPress 3.1 and currently there are lot of beautiful themes that use them to present content in a visually appealing manner. Sadly, the UI for this implementation had some usability problems which has keep developers away for tweaking it for client projects. The big update to Post Formats for 3.6 is the admin user interface. Seeking for wireframe ideas for the admin interface for each post format (i.e. chat, quote, link, image, video) is a must for this release. Folks from our Featured Partners are contributing to this feature: Helen Hou-Sandi from 10up is lead, and Pete Mall from Range is backup.
Custom Menus: The main focus for 3.6 will be improving the user interface for custom menus, which some users have found a little bit confusing. This will be lead by Dave Martin. The new hookable “common links” meta box with “home” and “Log in” as the default links will be introduced.