Wordpress Version 2.

8
See the original page on: http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_2.8

On May xxth, 2009, WordPress Version 2.8, named for xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, will be released to the public. For
more information on this enhancement and bug-fix release, read the Development Blog and see the
Changelog for 2.8.

New Features
User Features

 New Theme Installer routines

 Add CodePress syntax highlighting to Theme and Plugin editors
 Add Documentation(function) lookup to Theme and Plugin editors
 Use "Custom Header" for menu text and revise Default theme to reflect change
 Separate Comments into a separate postbox, from Discussion postbox, on the Edit Post screen
 Make tags accessible without Javascript on the edit screen
 Don't ask for confirmation when marking a comment as spam
 Don't notify post author of own comments
 Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns as set via the Screen Options tab
 Make titles into links in Dashboard Right Now module (this was in 2.7.1)
 Improved Admin icons (grey-to-transparent shadows)
 Update Blue Admin Color Scheme
 Press This improvements UI, quoting fixes, plus ability for Contributors to use Press This
 Add column "Rating" in Administration > Links > Edit
 Improve installer to help people entering wrong email addresses
 Improved Widget user interface
 Allow editing of all plugin files (Ticket 6732)
 Improved Plugin search (this was in 2.7.1) on Administration > Plugins > Add New
 Per Page option for plugins
 Move "Install a plugin in .zip format" to new Upload tab under Administration > Plugins > Add New
 Show absolute date instead of relative date for scheduled posts
 Fix tags suggest for post quick edit and bulk edit
 Permalink editor changes and fix for pages
 Autosave post/page when pressing Control/Command+S
 Add toggle all button to the Gallery tab in the uploader
 Support more than one gallery on the same page
 Add per page option to Screen Options for comments, posts, pages, media, categories, and tags
 Overhaul of LiveJournal importer (also add define WP_IMPORTING)
 Import category descriptions for Administration > Tools > Import > WordPress
 Show Tools menu for all users so they can access Turbo
 Check for new version when visiting Administration > Tools > Upgrade
 Fix most popular link category list
 Add description field for tags
 WAI-ARIA landmark roles to added to WordPress Default theme
 "Choose a city in the same timezone as you" for Timezone in Administration > Settings > General
 Remove My Hacks option from Administration > Settings > Miscellaneous
 Hide email addresses from low privilege users on Administration > Comments
 In upgrade process, provide better explanation for database upgrade message
 Enforce unique email addresses in Add/Edit users
  Make user_nicenames unique during registration
 Add "Send this password to the new user by email" option to Administration > Users > Add New
 Don't set user's Website url to http:// in Administration > Users > Add New
 Hide things that need to be available to screen readers via offscreen positioning
 Use invisible class for hiding labels and legends
 Use a semantic class name for text targeted to screen readers

Development, Themes, Plugins

 Improved database performance

 Drop post_category column from wp_posts table, and link_category column from wp_links
schemas
 Fix delete statements to ensure data integrity when innodb and foreign keys are used
 Enforce consistent ID types to allow for foreign keys to be defined between tables
 Add Sticky to list of post states
 Add a filter to the post states list
 Introduction and widespread use of transient and related fiters
 Add filters so AIM, Yahoo, and Jabber IM labels, in user profile, can be changed
 Add hook "after_db_upgrade"
 Add hooks for the Users, Categories, Link Categories, and Tags table columns
 HTTP API updates and fixes
 Add support for blocking all outbound HTTP requests
 Updated List of HTTP status codes (Ticket 9297)
 Use SimplePie for widget and dashboard feeds
 Switch to pomo lib. Support gettext contexts. Deprecate long form functions
 TinyMCE 3.2.3
 Use Jcrop 0.9.8 for cropping
 Update pclzip to 2.8
 Improved performance for script loading
 Improved archive and calendar queries
 Cron spawning improvements
 Timezone enhancements for PHP 5
 Add WP_Widget class and move native widgets into WP_Widget
 Allow other taxonomies (e.g. post categories) to be used with wp_tag_cloud (Changeset 10554)
 Add echo argument to wp_tag_cloud()
 Allow a plugin to control how many posts are displayed on edit pages
 Add "style" and "html" arguments to wp_list_authors (Ticket 4420)
 Add "exclude_tree" argument to wp_list_categories and make exclude behave like exclude_tree
when hierarchical is specified--this was actually a 2.7.1 change (Ticket 8614)
 New Template Tag, the_modified_author (Ticket 9154)
 Enhanced support for custom taxonomies
 Put page title before blog name in admin title (Ticket 9028)
 Use https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/ for the WordPress.org secret-key service
 Various phpDoc updates
 Refactor filters to avoid potential XSS attacks
 XMLRPC improvements
 Improved mysql2date coding
 Make authentication more pluggable
 Switch to using the ID when calling get_avatar internally to support caching plugins
 Allow plugins to provide a canonical redirect_url even if WordPress does not provide its own
 Drafts have post_date populated now, so look for a zeroed out post_date_gmt to determine non-
scheduled nature
  Fixes to query_posts (obey post_type, drop orderby=category, use group by for meta key queries,
remove meta_value from selected fields)
 Allow a plugin to filter the classes applied in wp_list_pages()
 Functions (get_adjacent_post_rel_link() and adjacent_post_rel_link()) to display relational links for
adjacent posts in the head (Ticket 8703)
 Add the sticky post grey background to the default theme
 Proxy support
 Let a plugin filter the expanded capabilities returned by map_meta_cap
 Allow the update period to be filtered in RSS/RDF feeds
 Store field types in wpdb object
 Add tag description functions tag_description and term_description
 Add page class to get_body_class()
 Deprecate get_catname()
 Use comments_open() and pings_open() in WordPress Default and Classic themes
 Add wp_trim_excerpt() filter
 Consolidate plugin/theme/core upgrade/install functions
 Add page-id-x class to body for pages
 Return empty list in wp_list_bookmarks() if requested bookmark category does not exist
 Allow menu reordering via plugin
 Add hook for updating user profile
 Add redirect argument to wp_loginout
 Add get_the_author_meta() and the_author_meta() functions
 Let plugins use screen layout columns
 Add labels to titles and text inputs
 Add hook for adding info to plugin update message
 Don't do core version check from front page loads
 Allow a plugin to vary the comment cookie lifetime (or even remove the cookies altogether)
 Allow plugin to replace just the default help while preserving the contextual help
 New escaping naming convention Ticket 9650
 Add number/offset arguments to get_pages() (same parameters can be used for wp_list_pages()
 Make login more pluggable
 Add a function to output a generic widget anywhere in a template
 Allow plugins to override tz support enable/disable
 Updated Trac

Advanced Features
JS script loader Improvements

 jQuery 1.3.2
 Improvements to the script loader: allows plugins to queue scripts for the front end head and
footer, adds hooks for server side caching of compressed scripts, adds support for ENFORCE_GZIP
constant (deflate is used by default since it's faster)
 Load the minified versions of the scripts by default, define('SCRIPT_DEBUG', true); can be used to
load the development versions
 Remove events from categories chechboxes in quick edit to speed up page unload
 Make simple form validation and ajax-add new categories compatible with jQuery 1.3.1
 Load farbtastic.js has to be loaded in the head
 Note: see Lester Chan's Loading Javascript in Footer blog and Andrew Ozz's Script Loader Updates
blog
New Widgets API

WP_Widget is a class that abstracts away much of the complexity involved in writing a widget, especially
multi-widgets.

 Basically, you extend WP_Widget with your own class that provides a constructor and three
methods -- widget(), form(), and update().
o widget() - outputs the actual content of the widget.
o update() - processes options to be saved.
o form() - outputs the options form.
 A widget is registered by passing the name of the widget class to register_widget().
 All widgets written with WP_Widget are multiple instance capable.
 Options
o Options for old single-instance widgets ported to WP_Widget will be upgraded to the new
multi-option storage format, which is simply a multi-dimensional array keyed by instance ID.
o Options for widgets using the old multi-instance pattern should work as is.
o If your widget has custom option storage needs, you can provide your own get_settings()
and save_settings() methods.
 The WP_Widget source can be viewed here (read the phpdoc for moreinfo on usage):
http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/wp-includes/widgets.php
 You can see examples of how to use it here: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/wp-
includes/default-widgets.php
 If you author any widgets, try porting them to WP_Widget and give your feedback on what can be
improved an Trac Ticket 8441.
 Props to the MultiWidget class, on which WP_Widget is based:
http://blog.firetree.net/2008/11/30/wordpress-multi-widget/
 The above extracted from Ryan Boren's wp-hackers post.

Menu reordering via plugin

 Example plugin demonstrates menus with Dashboard, Posts, and Comments in the first menu
group. The remaining menus follow in their usual order.
 When filtering the order array, any menus that are not mentioned in the array will be sorted after
ones that are mentioned.
 Unmentioned menus are sorted in their usual order, relative to other unmentioned menus.
 Information extracted from Ryan Boren's comments on Trac Ticket 9652