WordPress 4.4 Beta 2 which is slated for release on December 8 is now available for download and testing. This is software still in development, so it is recommend that you don’t run it on a production site. To get the beta, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge night-lies”). Or you can download the beta here (zip).
WordPress 4.4 update:
- Twenty Sixteen — The newest default theme for WordPress.
- Responsive Images — WordPress automatically delivers a more appropriate image to users depending on a variety of conditions like screen size, viewport size, and screen resolution.
- Embeds — WordPress can now embed rich content from nearly all sites that support the oEmbed standard — not just YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and the like. You can even embed previews of posts from other WordPress sites by pasting the URL on its own line.
There have been a lot of changes for developers to play with as well:
- REST API (phase 1) — The underlying infrastructure of the WordPress REST API plugin has been included in WordPress 4.4. Plugin authors can take advantage of this by adding custom endpoints.
- Term Metadata — Taxonomy term metadata is now included in WordPress 4.4. If you’ve already been using a plugin to implement term metadata, you should read this post on how to prepare. Also, the underlying WP_Term class improves caching when working with terms.
- Improved output — wp_title() is now deprecated; WordPress can handle the rendering of the document title automatically.
- Comments — Comment queries are now split for performance. Also, the underlying WP_Comment class improves caching and introduces strong-typing