WordPress 2.7 Now Available!
WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane”
Troubleshooting TinyMCE in WordPress 2.7


WordPress puts food on my table.

WordPress 2.7 Now Available!

WordPress 2.7 is now available! Users with a 2.7 beta or RC version can just go to Tools → Upgrade to get the latest version.

I’m incredibly excited to finally be able to release this to the world. For months, the entire WordPress core development team has been obsessing over this release. We’ve agonized over the smallest of details. We’ve spent long nights refining and tweaking when we should have long ago given up and gone to bed. The people-hours that have gone into this are tremendous, but more than that, we’ve poured our hearts and our souls into this release.

That’s not to say that it’s perfect. Some part of us wants to hoard this release away until we can polish it to complete perfection. But that wouldn’t be fair to you. It’s time to show our work. We hope you like it. We’re incredibly proud of it.

It’s certainly not a small change, especially for the WordPress admin. Change is difficult, even when for the better, so give it a fair trial before judging it. You’ll have developed “muscle memory” for certain tasks, so it will take a little while to rewire your brain. We think that once you’ve given yourself a chance to learn the new positions and functions, you’ll find that you’re a lot faster, and a lot more efficient at managing your WordPress site.

Favorite New Features

Without a doubt, my favorite new feature is comment moderation keyboard shortcuts. It has bothered me for a long time that comment moderation was such a tedious chore. Keyboard shortcuts (and the new inline reply) make it significantly less of a chore.

The new customizable post screen is a close second. I love that I can completely hide away all of the stuff that I don’t use (by clicking the “Screen Options” tab), and keep tags and categories on the right, while increasing the size of my post content box.

The new Publish module on the post screen is a personal treasure of mine. I took point on that, with some excellent design guidance from Jane Wells. It moves the “Save Draft” and “Publish” buttons far apart (a common complaint was that their proximity lead to accidental premature publishing. The Preview button now shows you the most recent changes to your post… not just the last saved version. Additionally, you can preview changes on published posts without those changes being shown publicly (until you’re ready). The Visibility section is new, and contains the functionality of private posts, password-protected posts, and sticky posts. Future posting is a lot more clear now. When you edit the time stamp to point to a future date, the “Publish” button becomes “Schedule.” All these changes were made to make your Publish module function predictably, so that you’re never wondering what happens when you click something.

The new menu system is great. I operate it in folded mode, so that my content can really take center stage.

There are too many new features to mention, and too many enhancements too small to make the features list (such as improved canonical URL support for even better SEO). Give it a try, and let us know what you think!

Written by Mark Jaquith

December 10, 2008 at 9:04 pm

Troubleshooting TinyMCE in WordPress 2.7

December 11, 2008 — Andrew Ozz One of the many improvements in WordPress 2.7 is the updated configuration of the visual editor, TinyMCE. It was optimized to support caching better and to load faster.

The compression is gone and all editor components are loaded as standard Javascript, CSS and HTML files. The total size of all loaded files is larger, but the editor loads a lot faster as all files are in the browser’s cache on the hard disk. And if the “Turbo” is turned on in WordPress and Gears enabled, the speed increase is even bigger as the browser does not have to check if any file has been updated.

In my (non-scientific) tests the loading time of the Add New Post screen went from about 5 – 8 sec. to about 1 – 2 sec. depending on the Internet connection and the computer speed.

The removal of the compression also improves compatibility with some unusual server configurations and fixes some hard to catch errors, for example when there are php errors or output starts in the current theme’s functions.php file.

Currently the editor’s settings together with all Javascript files are included directly in the HTML head section of the page, making it a lot easier to troubleshoot.

There are a few steps that would help with the troubleshooting if the editor doesn’t start or work properly:

  1. Make sure the “Disable the visual editor when writing” checkbox in your profile is not selected.
  2. Whitelist or set your blog as “trusted” in your firewall and antivirus program.
  3. Disable Gears, clear your browser’s cache, quit it, start it again, go back to the write page and force-reload it several times, while holding down Shift (Firefox) or Ctrl (IE). In Safari select Clear Cache (from the Safari menu on Mac).
  4. Try another browser and/or another computer.
  5. Disable all plugins, clear the cache, restart the browser and try again.
  6. Delete both wp-admin and wp-includes directories and upload fresh copies from the WordPress installation package.
  7. And finally install Firefox or Opera, notice any Javascript errors, especially the first one and try searching on the support forum for a solution. If no solution exists, open a new thread including the error.

December 11, 2008

WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane”

By Matt. Filed under Development.

The first thing you’ll notice about 2.7 is its new interface. From the top down, we’ve listened to your feedback and thought deeply about the design and the result is a WordPress that’s just plain faster. Nearly every task you do on your blog will take fewer clicks and be faster in 2.7 than it did in a previous version. (Download it now, or read on for more.)

Next you’ll begin to notice the new features subtly sprinkled through the new interface: the new dashboard that you can arrange with drag and drop to put the things most important to you on top, QuickPress, comment threading, paging, and the ability to reply to comments from your dashboard, the ability to install any plugin directly from WordPress.org with a single click, and sticky posts.

Digging in further you might notice that every screen is customizable. Let’s say you never care about author on your post listings — just click “Screen Options” and uncheck it and it’s instantly gone from the page. The same for any module on the dashboard or write screen. If your screen is narrow and the menu is taking up too much horizontal room, click the arrow to minimize it to be icon-only, and then go to the write page and drag and drop everything from the right column into the main one, so your posting area is full-screen. (For example I like hiding everything except categories, tags, and publish. I put categories and tags on the right, and publish under the post box.)

For a visual introduction to what 2.7 is, check out this video (available in HD, and full screen):

It’s all about you. It’s the next generation of WordPress, which is why we’ve bestowed it with the honor of being named for John Coltrane. And you can download it today.

Last, but certainly not least, this may be the last time you ever have to manually upgrade WordPress again. We heard how tired you were of doing upgrades for yourself and your friends, so now WordPress includes a built-in upgrade that will automatically notify you of new releases, and when you’re ready it will download them, install them, and upgrade your blog with a single click.

(As with any interface change it may take a little bit of time to acclimate yourself but soon you’ll find yourself whizzing through the screens. Even people who have hated it at first tell us after a few days they wonder how they got by before.)

The Story Behind 2.7

The real reason Coltrane is such a huge leap forward is because the community was so involved with every step of the process. Over 150 people contributed code directly to the release, our highest ever, with many tens of thousands more participating in the polls, surveys, tests, mailing lists, and other feedback mechanisms the WordPress dev team used in putting this release together.

For some of the back story in the development of 2.7, check out these blog posts (thanks to WeblogToolsCollection for the list):

This was interesting to us, a blogging software release we actually blogged about, but the process was hugely informative. Prior to its release today Crazyhorse and 2.7 had been tested by tens of thousands of people on their blogs, hundreds of thousands of you count .com. The volume of feedback was so high that we decided to push back the release date a month to take time to incorporate it all and do more revisions based on what you guys said.

For those of you wondering why we didn’t call this release 3.0, it’s because we abhor version number inflation. 3.0 will just be the next release after 2.9. The major features in new point releases approach also works well for products like OS X, with huge changes between a 10.3 and 10.4.

The Future

Those of you following along at home might have noticed this was our second major redesign of WordPress this year. Whoa nelly! While that wasn’t ideal, and I especially sympathize with those of you creating books or tutorials around WordPress, there’s good news. The changes to WordPress in 2.5 and 2.7 were necessary for us to break free of much of the legacy cruft and interface bloat that had built up over the years (gradually) and more importantly provide us with a UI framework and interface language we can use at the foundation to build tomorrow’s WordPress on, to express ideas we haven’t been able to before. So at the end of 2009 I expect, interface-wise, WordPress to look largely the same as it does now.

That said, we couldn’t be more excited about the future with regards to features. Now that we’ve cleared out more basic things, we are looking forward in the coming year to really tackling media handling including audio and video, better tools for plugin and theme developers, widgets, theme updates, more integrated and contextual help, and easier integration with projects like BuddyPress and bbPress.

Thank Yous

We would like to take a moment to thank the following WordPress.org users for being a part of 2.7: 082net, _ck_, Aaron Brazell, Aaron Campbell, Aaron Harp, aaron_guitar, abackstrom, Alex Rabe, Alex Shiels, anderswc, andr, Andrew Ozz, andy, Andy Peatling, Austin Matzko, axelseaa, bendalton, Benedict Eastaugh, betsyk, Björn Wijers, bobrik, brianwhite, bubel, Byrne Reese, caesarsgrunt, capripot, Casey Bisson, Charles E. Frees-Melvin, Chris Johnston, codestyling, corischlegel, count_0, Daniel Jalkut, Daniel Torreblanca, David McFarlane, dbuser123, Demetris Kikizas, Dion Hulse, docwhat, Donncha O Caoimh, Doug Stewart, Dougal Campbell, dsader, dtsn, dwc, g30rg3x, guillep2k, Hailin Wu, Hans Engel, Jacob Santos, Jamie Rumbelow, Jan Brasna, Jane Wells, Jean-LucfromBrussels, Jennifer Hodgdon, Jeremy Clarke, Jérémie Bresson, jick, Joe Taiabjee, John Blackbourn, John Conners, John Lamansky, johnhennmacc, Joost de Valk, Joseph Scott, kashani, Kim Parsell, Lloyd Budd, Lutz Schröer, Malaiac, Mark Jaquith, Mark Steel, Matt Freedman, Matt Mullenweg, Matt Thomas, matthewh84, mattyrob, mcs_trekkie, Michael Adams, Michael Hampton, MichaelH, mictasm, Mike Schinkel, msi08, msw0418, mtekk, Nick Momrik, Nikolay Bachiyski, Noel Jackson, Otto, Ozh, paddya, paul, pedrop, pishmishy, Po0ky, RanYanivHartstein, raychampagne, rdworth, reinkim, rickoman, rm53, rnt, Robert Accettura, roganty, Ryan Boren, Ryan McCue, Sam Bauers, Sam_a, schiller, Scott Houst, sekundek, Shane, Simek, Simon Wheatley, sivel, st_falcon, stefano, strider72, tai, takayukister, techcookies, Terragg, thinlight, tott, Trevor Fitzgerald, tschai, Txanny, Valiallah (Mani) Monajjemi, Viper007Bond, Vladimir Kolesnikov, wasp, wet, wfrantz, x11tech, xknown, xorax, ydekproductions, yoavf, yonosoytu, yoshi, zedlander