WordPress 4.0 is out. As always, I waited a few days to see if there was any panic in the techosphere, or whatever we’re calling it these days. After seeing no real complaints, I’ve upgraded a couple of sites, including this one, and it went off without a hitch. As always, have a backup first, just in case.
I haven’t had a lot of time to dig into what is new in the latest WordPress version that matters for us writers, but I have noticed one really great new feature so far. Before WordPress 4.0, if you wrote something long enough, the top of your writing window would scroll off the top of the screen. This is normal computer behavior. However, it took the toolbar with it. That meant that clicking the button to bold something, or choose a heading, or add a link required you to highlight your text, and then scroll up until the toolbar came back into view. In WordPress 4.0, no matter how long your post is, the tool bar stays where it is, and just the text scrolls up.
That’s probably how it always should have been, but maybe that’s easier said than done. Another feature is that scrolling of text you are writing. Now, when your post gets big enough, that little writing window that you have on your WordPress dashboard just gets bigger. In fact, I’m writing extra words right now, to try and make it happen so I can see it in action.
There it goes. Wow, it’s pretty unobtrusive too. If you aren’t looking for it, like if you are looking at the text you are typing, for example, you might miss it when the bottom of the writing window pops down one line at a time.
The other updates mentioned in the post-update About screen are about managing media (graphics and pictures) as well as embeds, which is when instead of linking to something like a YouTube video, you put a little YouTube window actually in the middle of your page. I’ll test that out later, and post any other new, or improved, features I find that will be useful for writers with a WordPress freelance writing blog.
-Happy writing.