I’m excited to announce that the first beta of WordPress 3.9 is now available for testing.

WordPress 3.9 is due out next month — but in order to hit that goal, we need your help testing all of the goodies we’ve added:

We updated TinyMCE, the software powering the visual editor, to the latest version. Be on the lookout for cleaner markup. Also try the 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.) It’s possible some plugins that added stuff to the visual editor (like a new toolbar button) no longer work, so we’d like to hear about them (#24067). (And be sure to open a support thread for the plugin author.)

We’ve added widget management to live previews (the customizer). Please test editing, adding, and rearranging widgets! (#27112) We’ve also added the ability to upload, crop, and manage header images, without needing to leave the preview. (#21785)

(the customizer). Please test editing, adding, and rearranging widgets! (#27112) We’ve also added the ability to upload, crop, and manage header images, without needing to leave the preview. (#21785) We brought 3.8’s beautiful new theme browsing experience to the theme installer . Check it out! (#27055)

. Check it out! (#27055) Galleries now receive a live preview in the editor. Upload some photos and insert a gallery to see this in action. (#26959)

now receive a live preview in the editor. Upload some photos and insert a gallery to see this in action. (#26959) You can now drag-and-drop images directly onto the editor to upload them. It can be a bit finicky, so try it and help us work out the kinks. (#19845)

images directly onto the editor to upload them. It can be a bit finicky, so try it and help us work out the kinks. (#19845) Some things got improved around editing images . It’s a lot easier to make changes to an image after you insert it into a post (#24409) and you no longer get kicked to a new window when you need to crop or rotate an image (#21811).

. It’s a lot easier to make changes to an image after you insert it into a post (#24409) and you no longer get kicked to a new window when you need to crop or rotate an image (#21811). New audio/video playlists. Upload a few audio or video files to test these. (#26631)

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on the WordPress Trac. There, you can also find a list of known bugs and everything we’ve fixed so far.

This software is still in development, so we don’t recommend you run it on a production site. Consider setting up a test site just to play with the new version. To test WordPress 3.9, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”). Or you can download the beta here (zip).

DEVELOPERS! Hello! There’s lots for you, too.

Please test your plugins and themes! There’s a lot of great stuff under the hood in 3.9 and we hope to blog a bit about them in the coming days. If you haven’t been reading the awesome weekly summaries on the main core development blog, that’s a great place to start. (You should definitely follow that blog.) For now, here are some things to watch out for when testing:

Happy testing!

Lots of improvements

Little things go a long way

Please test beta one



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