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Sarah Gooding

WordPress 4.3 Beta 1 Now Available for Testing

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WordPress 4.3 is right around the corner with beta 1 released and ready for testing. According to the 4.3 project schedule, there will be no more commits for new enhancements or feature requests from this point on. Contributors are now focusing on bug fixes and documentation ahead of August 18th, the target release date.

With all the controversy surrounding WordPress 4.3’s inclusion of menus in the customizer, you may have missed a few other lesser known features that are on track to be included and need to be put through the paces. The new site icons feature was added to trunk this week, along with a text editor for the Press This posting interface.

WordPress lead developer Mark Jaquith has been working on making passwords more secure. As of 4.3, WordPress will no longer send passwords via email. The password strength meter is now more tightly integrated. It will warn users upon selection of a weak password and can also suggest a secure password.

One interesting new improvement added to the post editor is recognition of some basic markdown-esque patterns inside TinyMCE:

Certain text patterns are automatically transformed as you type, including * and – transforming into unordered lists, 1. and 1) for ordered lists, > for blockquotes and one to six number signs (#) for headings

For those who are used to formatting text this way, the post editor in WordPress 4.3. will be a more friendly place for speedy composition.

Admin post and page list tables will take a huge leap forward to become more responsive in this release, improving the experience of using WordPress on smaller screens. Previously, the columns that could not fit were truncated, but WordPress 4.3 will allow columns to be toggled into view.

Check out release lead Konstantin Obenland’s beta announcement post to download a zip of the beta. If you want to help test, the easiest way is to get hooked up via the WordPress Beta Tester plugin. Bug reports are welcome on the Alpha/Beta support forums and can also be filed on WordPress trac.

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9 responses to “WordPress 4.3 Beta 1 Now Available for Testing”

  1. Thanks to all who are working on this release but I don’t see anything that excites me. Granted, I use WordPress for one site for a particular use case so that’s why I don’t use a lot of its features. I wonder how many support threads will be created because people report strange things happening in the post editor when really they’re doing Markdown by accident.

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    • Style how customizer works is changed little bit (no more kind of accordion), from first test, it feels faster and better overall.
      Icon looks like cool feature, not sure about standard, currently I upload just .ico everywhere and its relatively ok. Don’t feel much for uploading 15 different icons for purpose of favicon.

      Press this … I never tried this and can not imagine someone use it :)

      Btw. if adding new menu item, its not really clear how to roll back second window after item is added.
      Maybe some change to that “x Add items” after item is added will help for first job :) then its does not matter.
      At all customizer looks really cool.

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  3. I downloaded and started to explore the beta last night. Obviously the core team puts a lot of work in each update and/or new version that gets released, so you have to appreciate the fact doing this involves a lot.There will always be elements that some like while others not so much, but as I test this version out, I will do it in the mind of typical user and not as a theme developer.

    There are some things though that makes me scratch my head wondering, why? As Jeff mentioned about some may see strange things happening when suddenly something turns into a list, or something else happens as they type in the post editor. Even the site icon (which really should have been named “favicon”) may create some confusion, albeit I am sure many will be happy they can add a favicon.

    Regarding the Customizer, I personally believe this should have been left strictly for “theme options” only and to leave out “admin” functions out. But I know the customizer is a heated topic so I will leave that one alone.

    I will continue to explore and test out this beta today and see how things go.

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  4. I see nothing really exciting, just layers of paint, sorry. But, I’d like to thank Boone Gorges for fixing the taxonomy term sharing mess once and for all (#30261). I hope we can enjoy any kind of taxonomy meta in the near future.

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  5. YAY for no more passwords being emailed :) .

    “It will warn users upon selection of a weak password and can also suggest a secure password.”

    Will be interesting how they suggest more secure passwords. Never really understood the reason for not just requiring a strong password or at least decent password.

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    • I tell you reason for this … It is so annoying if I can not set password what I want and during registration to any site get millions of errors about filling one column wrong, another short … and after whole fight recognize that service is not good for me and delete account.
      Strong passwords are not so user-friendly at least for me.

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