WordPress v3.9 is due to be released in April, and we’re bringing you a preview of the improvements and changes coming your way very soon. It includes a few major updates to the editor and media library, as well as the Customizer.

Details on the improvements to the admin dashboard include:

  • Adding an updated TinyMCE, the software powering the visual editor, to the latest version. Be on the lookout for cleaner markup. Also, new paste handling — if you paste in a block of text from Microsoft Word, for example, it will no longer come out terrible. (The “Paste from Word” button you probably never noticed has been removed.)
  • Adding widget management to live previews (the customizer). Also adding the ability to upload, crop, and manage header images, without needing to leave the preview.
  •  Adding 3.8’s beautiful new theme browsing experience to the theme installer.
  • Galleries will receive a live preview in the editor.
  • Adding the ability to drag-and-drop images directly onto the editor to upload them.
  • Some things will get improved around editing images. It’ll be a lot easier to make changes to an image after you insert it into a post, and you’ll no longer get kicked to a new window when you need to crop or rotate an image.
  • New audio/video playlists.

Here are a few screenshots we have of the new features.

There are new behind-the-scene things for developers, too:

  • The load process in multisite getting rewritten.
  • Will now use the MySQL Improved (mysqli) database extension if you’re running a recent version of PHP.
  • Autosave will be refactored.
  • Library updates, in particular Backbone 1.1 and Underscore 1.6. Also Masonry 3, PHPMailer, and Plupload.

Contact us if you have any WordPress questions, or want us to help you migrate your web site to WordPress.