Upcoming Features in WordPress 2.8 : A Short Glimpse

WordPress 2.8 is the Next major release and its Already packed with New and Exciting Features.Although it is still in the development Stage But Features like Advanced theme Installation and Better Widget management Is already available.

Set the Number Of columns In the Dashboard

May be Useful If you Use a Lot of Tabs in your WordPress dashboard. In WordPress 2.8 You can set columns in your Screen options and Decide More options to appear in The Dashboard. Here is a Screenshot

You may have to adjust Your screen Resolution if You Want To Use 4 columns. I had to switch My resolution to 1200 X 800 from the preferred 1024 X 768.

Installing and Upgrading Themes In WordPress 2.8

This is the major Upgrade That’s Coming In WordPress 2.8. Now You No longer Need to Download a Theme and Install It in your Blog To test it . You can search for a theme from your Blog Dashboard Itself and Preview it.If you are Satisfied with that Theme and Want to Install it then Hit the Panic Button “Install”. No need to Download/Upload anything. Simple and easy.

I Did a Search For a 3 column WordPress theme. I previewed it and then Installed it In my test Blog.No Download/ Upload . You can also Browse the archive Of WordPress themes from Your Dashboard Itself.This Brings Everything Under Your grip.

Similar to Plugins  you can Browse over the themes directory and Install or preview  themes Without Uploading anything.When you Install a New theme The corresponding Theme FIles are Automatically Copied in your Web Server .

Advanced Widget Management : Drag and Drop Enabled

Moving Widgets into different Widget Areas can be Tiring Sometimes as WordPress 2.7 does Not Supports dragging and Dropping the Widgets Into Different Widget areas.Suppose You Want to Move a Widget From Sidebar1  to Sidebar 2 in WP-2.7.You have to :

1.Copy the Content of the Widget in Sidebar 1 , Save it as a Text File using Notepad.

2.Remove the Widget from Sidebar 1.

3.Add a New Widget in Sidebar 2 And paste the code that you copied in step 1.

But WordPress 2.8 is Coming with an advanced widget panel.You can Move your Widgets from one Widget area to another By Just Drag and Drop and This Solves the Manual Copying and saving of the Widget Codes.

Furthermore ,The Widget area shows a list of Active and Inactive Widgets In the left So that You can easily Figure out Which Widgets You are using. WordPress.com blogs Will also get this feature enabled Once WordPress Upgrades to version 2.8.

For Developers : WordPress is holding a design challenge for a brush-up of the current  administration interface for the upcoming version 2.8. So if you Love designing and Have Some Photoshop Skills you can try your luck .May be Your design Gets Selected.

Grab the Latest Version  and Test it

Though WordPress 2.8 is not available as an official Download  you can still Download the Nightly Build for testing purposes.

Important : Please do not perform the Installation as the Coding and Development is Not yet complete.You can however test It On a Wamp server installation or in another Test blog elsewhere.

See the Detailed changes that are about to come In WordPress 2.8.The Top Developments of WordPress 2.8  Would be widget management, theme browser/installer and performance upgrades. You can take the Survey and Suggest new features to the Developers.Thank you Dino