WordPress 3.6 is approximately 1.5 months away; it’s due to ship April 29th. Here’s a peak at what’s to come.
Revisions
At the bottom of every post revision, you’ll see auto-saves of previous drafts. In WordPress 3.6, you’ll be able to compare each change.
Post Format UI
Nearly 2 years ago, WordPress introduced Post_Formats. It makes formatting specific posts similar to Tumblr. However, to configure it has required coding to enable, and additional coding to style. Alex King designed a great plugin to make this more manageable, Post Formats Admin UI. This plugin will be essentially made part of WordPress core and will soon have graphic icons instead of only text on the tabs. The last part needed for this is to be sure that themes also support the post_formats design.
Twenty Thirteen
Since Twenty Ten, WordPress default themes have supported selective post_formats. Not only does WordPress as a platform need to support them, but additionally the theme you use has to specify how these are styled. Twenty Thirteen has completely customized the look for all post_format options. See the demo here.
Post Locking
If you open a post to edit it while another user has the same post open, you’ll receive a notice that another user is editing and be presented with the option to take over or cancel.
Navigation Menus
Since WordPress 3.0 users could customize how the navigation menu functioned. In WordPress 3.6, a few tweaks to the user interface have been implemented to hopefully make it more clear which menu is being altered and where it will be displayed on the website.
Other Improvements
Look for improvements to auto-save and notification when you’ve been logged out of the site. Like editing your website from WordPress on mobile devices, a local revision will be saved until you are successfully logged in and save the revision.
The countdown to WordPress 3.6 is on. In the meantime, I’ll be testing out the beta version at my personal & family blog: Robertson’s Home.