WordPress 3.9 was released on 16th April 2014 with some major changes.
It’s the visual TinyMCE Editor that takes the trophy in this release. It has been powered with a bunch of capabilities that would increase productivity.
Improved visual editing
The updated visual editor now has better accessibility & mobile support. In addition, now you can paste content from Microsoft Word into the editor without having to cleanup the styling added by MS Word.
Edit images easily
Images can now be re-sized within the visual editor itself. Apart from this, the tools like rotation, cropping & flipping are now easily accessible. Once the pencil (edit) icon is clicked from the editor, you need to click on “Edit Original” and there we have all the tools. A new button of “Replace” has also been added on the “Image Details” screen that allows you to replace an existing image with another one from the library or by uploading a new one.
Drag & drop images in editor
This is perhaps the most important point that speeds up the process of uploading images. Multiple images can be dragged & dropped into the visual editor at once. As soon as they are dropped, the Media Library opens up.
Live Gallery previews
Prior to 3.9, a placeholder was shown to indicate the gallery’s position. Now when a gallery is added, it’s preview appears inside the visual editor itself. It displays the images in grid format just as they would actually appear in your published post.
Audio & Video
Wordpress 3.9 makes it possible to create audio and video playlists. After clicking on the “Add Media” button, you can upload the audio/video files. On the left side of that screen, you will see the links to create a playlist.
Live widget & header previews
Live widget previews allow you to see the widget changes in the theme. You do not need to click on “Save & Publish” in order to see the changes. Similarly for the header, the modifications appear as you are doing them. Whether you are changing the Site Title/Tagline, or changing the font color or anything else – it all happens in real-time.
New theme browser
Search for themes hosted in the WordPress theme directory just got easier. The Add Theme screen also is now much better than the previous one.
The WordPress 3.9 release has tried to ensure that the users can increase their productivity while using the editor as well as tried to catch up on revamping some screens to match with other pages.
