Yesterday WordPress released an early Christmas present for all us bloggers with the update to 2.9. The update is mostly chocked full of bug fixes and improvements to the wordpress code. Below is a breakdown.
1. It’s faster: Although not a listed improvement, many users, including myself, are seeing that sites are running faster with the 2.9 upgrade.
2. Built in Image Editor: WordPress now includes a basic image editor including crop, edit, flip, rotate and scale images all available through the media library and when uploading/inserting images into posts.
3. Batch plugin updating: Now more updating each individual plugin site wide, under tools, in the update tab, a new option to update all plugins at once makes managing multiple sites more easy and the updater checks to make sure the plugin updates are compatible with your version of WordPress.
4. Oembed support: no more embed codes for inserting videos. Just paste the url for the video on its own line inside your post and the video will automatically be embedded. Currently all the major players like Youtube are supported with more providers coming.
5. Sitewide Trashcan: No more accidentaly deleted posts or comments; the new trashcan saves the posts for thirty days.
Below is a WordPress video highlighting some of the new features.