WordPress 4.5 Development Kicks Off, Release Set for Mid-April

WordPress 4.5 development is now in full swing with Mike Schroder at the helm, leading the kickoff meeting today. Schroder is joined by newly named deputies, Mel Choyce and Adam Silverstein, who will help manage the release.

The 4.5 project schedule is now posted. The merge window for feature plugins opens February 3rd and the first Beta is expected the last week of that month. April 12th is the target date for the official release.

The call for feature plugins is beginning early this time around and a Feature Plugin chat is scheduled for Tuesday, January 12, 2016, 3:00 PM CST.

“The main purpose of the early chat is for plugins that believe they are ready for merge, and to start up new ones for future releases,” Schroder said. Those who have ideas and/or plugins to put forward will have an opportunity to get feedback from other contributors.

During the kickoff meeting, Schroder took stock of the general areas that contributors have shown interest in working on for WordPress 4.5. Weston Ruter and other contributors on the customizer component have several features in progress, including Customize Pane Resizer, Customize Device Preview, Customize Setting Validation, and the creation of page stubs for adding nav menu items. Ruter considers the Transactions and Selective Refresh features ready to go for consideration in 4.5.

Michael Arestad said that he is exploring “a series of smaller projects that can make Post New and the publishing process a bit nicer.” Joe McGill is hoping to make progress on improving the compression of resized images in core. John Blackbourn expressed interest in working with a team on
“No More Mixed Content” https improvements.

More detailed discussion about potential feature plugins for 4.5 (and future releases) will happen in the scheduled chat next week.