WordPress 2.7

A few days ago I upgraded davidhughes.org to the newly released, and latest version of WordPress: 2.7.

When I saw the first shots of the new dashboard and IA for WordPress 2.7 I was  concerned that the changes were too great and perhaps not being done for the right reasons: change for changes sake. But having had a few days to play with WordPress 2.7 I’m very pleased with the new approach.

The most significant change in the completely new interface is the move form horizontal navigation across the top of the page to vertical navigation on the left. I’ll admit that this change gave me a few muscle-memory moments, where I out of habit moved my mouse to the top; but it’s amazing how quickly you adapt.

This new navigation gives WordPress much more flexibility to add new features in the future as they are no longer constrained by the width of the average browser window. I’m pleased to report that this new layout also works very well, if not better, on the 10″ 1024×600 pixel screen of my Samsung NC10 netbook.

In addition to the great new user interface there are a number of other new features and enhancements in WordPress 2.7; a favourite of mine being  the ability to upgrade from within the WordPress dashboard.

WordPress has  a very good introduction to 2.7 on their site that also explains the thinking behind the developments.

In my opinion the best blogging platform just got better; I can’t wait to see what WordPress 2.8 brings…