WordPress 4.5 Release – What You Need To Know

And…the day is here!  The official WordPress 4.5 release named “Coleman” in honor of jazz saxophonist Coleman Hawkins.  What’s 4.5 all about?  Let’s break it down for you:

Inline Linking

WordPress has had a focus on a less distracting writing workspace over the last few major releases.  Beginning with the ability to hide the unnecessary WordPress menus (which I’m doing right now) while writing and now implementing inline linking.  The thought process here is to once again avoid distraction so you can focus on what’s important: writing.

Live Responsive Previews

This is pretty cool!  There’s obviously been a big emphases on responsive web development over the last few years.  Especially after Google announced Mobilegeddon last spring.  So WordPress rolled out a feature that allows you to see responsive previews from the Customizer.

Login With Email

Beginning with 4.5, users will now be able to login with either their username or email address.  This is a major feature in my opinion as we have lots of clients requesting this.  While it was an easy function/plugin to enable such a feature, not having to add it is nice.

Conclusion

Not as large of a release as we’ve seen in the past but definitely moving forward.  With a great team in place at Automattic, we should be on track to see great things in the future.  There was a total of 298 contributors to this release.