Before anything else: as of today, WordPress 2.8 is in beta. That means that it’s not a stable release yet, and therefore not appropriate to use for your important blogs. Things might be buggy. Things might stop working. So unless you like living on the edge, install 2.8 only to play around with- or, if you’re a developer, for testing your new themes and plugins.

That said, I installed 2.8 beta 2 on a test blog today, and it rocks. Here are five things I love about it:

New Template Tag: the modified author

If you run a blog with multiple authors who regularly modify posts, you’ll love this. It basically allows you to display the name of the last person who modified a particular post. Useful, too, if your blog has been around for a long time, and you’re updating someone else’s posts from years ago.

Instant Feed Links

It’s no secret that I adore feeds. One very awesome thing 2.8 does is automatically add feed links specific to the page being viewed. It does this for category archives, author archives- whatever your poison. This is great for your readers, who might want to subscribe to only a certain author’s posts on your blog.

Better Widget Management

I mean seriously better. See:

The drag-n-drop is smooth (even on my Safari, where I always had trouble before), and the new design just makes more sense.

Better Javascript Loading

Does anyone not use javascript these days? WordPress 2.8 gives you the delightful ability to add javascript includes at the bottom of your pages. Why is this delightful? Because it ultimately means faster page loading times- always a good thing. You can learn more about the changes here.

Better Theme Installer

This one’s my favorite. Have a look at the screenshot below:

That’s right, you can search through themes according to color, columns, width, etc.- and basically spend hours finding just the perfect theme for your blog.

Have you installed WordPress 2.8? What do you like/hate about it?