At Sterner Stuff, our favorite content management system is WordPress. This month, we saw the release of WordPress 4.6. Let’s take a quick look at some of the improvements we’re seeing with this month’s release.
Pepper Adams
Each WordPress release is named after a jazz musician, and 4.6 is no different. This time around, the developers are paying homage to baritone saxophonist Park Frederick “Pepper” Adams III. Here he is performing the Thelonious Monk standard “Straight, No Chaser”. Feel free to listen as you read.
Expansion of Shiny Updates
UX continues to be a big focus of the WordPress team. Most recently, they’ve been rolling out changes that help keep you in place while working using inline updates that traditionally needed a slow, disorienting page refresh. For 4.6, they’ve expanded the work done on the plugins page. Now, when you’re installing, mass updating, or deleting plugins, you’ll still keep your place – not just when updating one plugin at a time.
Native system fonts
Since WordPress 3.8, the admin screens have used the popular Open Sans typeface. With WordPress 4.6, the platform follows an emerging trend of using the system font stack. This means that now you’ll see a typeface standard to your operating system. This drops an HTTP request on the back-end and when your admin bar is displayed on the front-end. It’s just one request, and it was from the blazing-fast Google Fonts content-delivery network, but we’re in a game of inches.
You can see the differences here. The first line of each example is in good old Open Sans and the second line is in your operating system’s native font.
And myriad other things
The page editor now keeps better track of your changes in the browser. If you lose an internet connection or accidentally close out, it’ll get you sorted out. It’ll also now let you know if you try to insert a broken link in the editor.
If you’re subscribed to software updates via Sterner Stuff’s Eyes On service, you’ll see this update come to your site by the end of the month. If not, remember, you don’t have to start from scratch to work with us. We can take a look at your existing site, WordPress or otherwise, and start turning it into a successful digital platform for your business.
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