WordPress 3.4 is here and out the door. We’ve dubbed this release “Green” in honor of guitarist Grant Green whose soulful simplicity has kept many of us company during this release.

This release includes significant improvements to theme customization, custom headers, Twitter embeds, and image captions — here’s a short clip with the highlights:

For Users

The biggest change in 3.4 is the theme customizer which allows you to play around with various looks and settings for your current theme or one you’re thinking about switching to without publishing those changes to the whole world. For themes that support it, you can change colors, backgrounds, and of course custom image headers. We have more planned for the customizer down the road.

Throughout the rest of the admin you’ll notice tweaks to make your everyday life easier. For example, if you have lots of themes we’ve made it quicker to browse them all at once without paging. We’ve made it possible to use images from your media library to populate custom headers, and for you to choose the height and width of your header images.

We’ve expanded our embed support to include tweets: just put a Twitter permalink on its own line in the post editor and we’ll turn it into a beautiful embedded Tweet. And finally, image captions have been improved to allow HTML, like links, in them.

For Developers

There are hundreds of under-the-hood improvements in this release, notably in the XML-RPC, themes, and custom header APIs, and significant performance improvements in WP_Query and the translation system. The Codex has a pretty good summary of the developer features, and you can always dive into Trac directly.

We’ve also put together a busy developer’s field guide to the new APIs in 3.4.

It takes a village

Here are some of the fine folks who were involved in bringing 3.4 to the world:

082net, Aaron D. Campbell, Adam Harley, AJ Acevedo, akshayagarwal, Alex Concha, Alex King, Alex Mills (Viper007Bond), ampt, Amy Hendrix, Andrea Rennick, Andrew Nacin, Andrew Ozz, Andrew Ryno, Andy Skelton, Arie Putranto, Austin Matzko, Barry, BenChapman, Ben Huson, Benjamin J. Balter, Bill Erickson, Billy (bananastalktome), Boone Gorges, camiloclc, casben79, Caspie, ceefour, cheald, chellycat, Chelsea Otakan, Chip Bennett, Chris Olbekson, Coen Jacobs, Cristi Burcă, Cyapow, Dan Collis-Puro, Daniel Bachhuber, Daniel Convissor, Daniel Jalkut (Red Sweater), daniloercoli, Daryl Koopersmith, David Gwyer, deltafactory, demetris, Dion Hulse, dllh, Dominik Schilling, Doug Provencio, Drew Jaynes (DrewAPicture), ebababi, edward-mindreantre, emhr, Empireoflight, Eric Andrew Lewis, Eric Mann, Evan Anderson, Evan Solomon, Fred Wu, Fumito Mizuno, Gary Cao, Gary Jones, Gautam, Gennady Kovshenin, George Mamadashvili, George Stephanis, Gustavo Bordoni, hearvox, Helen Hou-Sandi, Hugo Baeta, Ian Stewart, insertvisionhere, Ipstenu, Jacob Chappell, Jane Wells, Japh, jaquers, JarretC, jeremyclarke, Jeremy Felt, Jesper Johansen (Jayjdk), Jiehan Zheng, Joachim Jensen (Intox Studio), Joachim Kudish (jkudish), John Blackbourn (johnbillion), John Ford, John James Jacoby, Jon Cave, Joost de Valk, Jorge Bernal, Joseph Scott, Justin, Justin Givens, Kailey Lampert (trepmal), Kenan Dervisevic, Konstantin Kovshenin, Konstantin Obenland, Kristopher Lagraff, Kurt Payne, Lance Willett, Lardjo, Lee Willis (leewillis77), linuxologos, Lutz Schroer, Mantas Malcius, Marcus, Mark Jaquith, Marko Heijnen, Mark Rowatt Anderson, Matias Ventura, Matt Martz, mattonomics, Matt Thomas, Matt Wiebe, MattyRob, Max Cutler, Mert Yazicioglu, mgolawala, Michael Adams (mdawaffe), Michael Beckwith, Michael Fields, Mike Schinkel, Mike Schroder, Mike Toppa, Milan Dinic, mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine), Mohammad Jangda, mrtorrent, Name.ly, Naoko McCracken, Nashwan Doaqan, Niall Kennedy, Nikolay Yordanov, norocketsurgeon, npetetin, Nuno Morgadinho, Olivier Collet, Paul Biron, pavelevap, Pete Mall, Peter Westwood, pishmishy, Prasath Nadarajah, prettyboymp, Ptah Dunbar, pw201, Rami Yushuvaev, Rarst, RENAUT, Reuben Gunday, Roscius, Ross Hanney, russellwwest, Ryan Boren, Ryan Duff, Ryan McCue, Safirul Alredha, Samir Shah, Samuel “Otto” Wood, Seisuke Kuraishi, Sergey Biryukov, Simon Wheatley, sirzooro, sksmatt, Stas Sușkov, Stephane Daury (stephdau), tamlyn, Thomas Griffin, Thorsten Ott, TobiasBg, Tom Auger, Toni Viemero, transom, Ulrich Sossou, Utkarsh Kukreti, Wojtek Szkutnik, wonderslug, Xavier Borderie, Yoav Farhi, Zach “The Z Man” Abernathy, Zack Tollman, Ze Fontainhas, and zx2c4.

See you next time!

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