Last month WordPress 3.9 was released in April and all our wp:Manage sites have been updated. This release brings lots of great new features to the administration interface so we thought it was worth giving our customers a quick run-down on what’s new…

What’s New

General

• A smoother media editing experience
• Improved visual editing – speed, accessibility, and mobile support
• Edit images easily – quicker access to crop and rotation tools, scale images directly in the editor
• Drag and drop your images right onto the editor
• Image gallery previews right in the editor
• Showcase music and clips with simple audio and video playlists
• Live widget and header image previews in the Customizer
• Stunning new theme browser
• The “update” message has been restored to the dashboard

Posts

• Add “Return to post editor” link from Revisions screen
• A “View Post” link will now show for any post an author can read
• Distraction Free Writing mode is now responsive to any size device

Media

• Edit images from the Add Media modal
• Improvements to the “Attach Media” pop-up interface
• Better support for auto-playing videos
• Drag and Drop files into the editor
• Full-screen Drag and Drop zone in Distraction Free Writing
• oEmbed support added for imgur and meetup.com

Comments

• Small improvements to comment administration screens, link colors, language tweaks

Appearance

• Widget Customizer management
• Upload header images with cropping in the Customizer
• Improved theme install workflow

Users

• Admin auto-complete improvements
• Make sure the “Send this password to the new user by email” toggle option value is remembered

Accessibility

• Improved focus styles for form elements throughout the admin
• Keyboard accessibility added for theme install screen and theme action buttons

Update

WordPress 3.9.1 has since been released. This is a security/bug fix with no additional new or changed functionality.