The latest feature that is finally working in WordPress 2.7’s development version is the automatic upgrade feature of the core files. Finally, I don’t have to download, extract, and FTP the files to upgrade my WordPress install.

Another thing I’m loving so far about this new version is the automated installation of the plugins found in the official WordPress Plugin Repository. So far, I haven’t run into any issues with it in the admin UI. Uploading a plugin from the admin UI is still in the works, though. I think they’ll be fashioning it after the media uploader. The only issue I have was with this one plugin that is no longer supported by its author: Download Counter. I have resolved to replacing it with another Download Manager and cleaned up my downloads, and got rid of files I no longer support, transferred to the Plugin/Theme repository, or stopped development. I haven’t upgraded this blog to the latest nightly, but I’m trying to make it as compatible to 2.7 as much as possible.

Automated theme installation from the repository is not yet implemented, nor have I seen any indicators about it being integrated, although if they were able to make the automated plugin installation work, it would only be a matter of time before it gets implemented.

My previous post also showed a new admin UI with the menu vertically oriented on the left side. It’s still on the same, but they revised it again. I’ll let the screenshots speak for itself.

Did I mention that comment threading functionality will be integrated to core? If I haven’t, then I just did. BUT the feature is theme-dependent. It’s up to the theme author to put in the support for this new feature. One of the reasons I won’t be releasing any more themes. For now. There’s a write-up for theme developers on how to make their themes compatible with the new comment feature. It’s quite a good read for theme developers. Beware of the amazon ad, though. It almost crashed Firefox. Make sure to read the comments as it gives insightful tips and tricks, too.

Utilities are gone, together with the Inbox. I still don’t know what it was for, and I’m kinda glad it’s gone. It’ll only add to the learning curve that is currently becoming steeper and steeper.

All in all, the new UI and the new and improved features being added to WordPress 2.7 will hopefully make the blogging experience more enjoyable as it lets you focus more on the blogging part and not the theme development part. WordPress may not be considered a CMS, but it sure is one heck of a blogging platform.

New blog theme currently in development. Unfortunate or otherwise, it will be used exclusively in this blog, though. Yeah, I’m sticking with this excuse for not posting anything new.

Out of sheer boredom, I decided to install and try out WordPress 2.7-hemorrhage, and so far, I like the changes made to the admin UI. The animated dropdown menus are quite smooth, but it takes some getting used to, with it being on the left side and is vertically oriented.

By default, the Content tree is expanded. This section is not quite new since it is just a renamed Manage page, but with more focus on content-related stuff. From here, you can manage Posts, Comments, Links, Pages, etc. The Media Library can also be found here. What I like about this section is that you don’t need a plugin anymore to quickly reply to a comment. I believe Ozh’s Absolute Comments plugin made it to core. This makes replying to comments A LOT easier. Also, the Quick Edit feature of the Posts page in this section lets you change the title, slug, date published, category, tags, and status without needing to edit the whole post. You can also make it a sticky post, but I believe this is dependent on the theme to be able to use this feature properly. Writing a new post has been improved, as the page is beefed up with settings that lets you display or not certain post properties. The tags and categories section is also moved to the right side of the post entry box. Finally.

Of course, the Dashboard is still there. It was revamped to show a posting area where you don’t have to go to the Write Post page. This makes for quick posting, hence the term “QuickPress.” There’s also an Inbox, which I don’t have an idea what it does except show comments from some post I have no idea what about. I’m guessing this is simply a placeholder for something the developers will be rolling out as a surprise. And I don’t think it has anything to do with email, but I’m suspecting it would be in line with showing comments from WordPress.com posts. It may be another use for the WordPress.com API.

The Design tab is replaced by the Themes section, which allows you to do the same things as before: browse the installed themes, manage widgets, and edit template files. It basically has the same features as 2.6, with the theme preview before activating the theme. However, the developers are planning to automate the addition or installation of new themes from the Directory page of the Themes section. It’s not yet implemented with the current nightly, and maybe added past 2.7, but it will surely make it there.

Managing categories, tags, users and user profiles, the Import and Export feature, and link categories are now in the Utilities section, with the addition of the Inbox. With my installation of this nightly, the Inbox is still not manageable. Nothing new here except the layout. The developers simply organized what can be managed into more sensible sections – Content for content-related stuff, and Utilities for content meta(?)-related stuff.

One other thing that really caught my eye and made me want to deploy it immediately to my photoblog is the new image management features added. With the current stable version of WordPress, you can manage your thumbnail- and medium-size maximum dimensions from the Miscellaneous page of the Settings section. With the upcoming release, still in the same page, you can also control the large-size maximum dimensions and set the default posting settings for the image size, image alignment, and image link. What I’m wishing the developers add to this is the ability to resize the existing images without having to re-upload them whenever you change one of the image size settings. Although far from being a photoblogging platform, these features, together with a photoblog-focused theme, would make a great alternative to other photoblogging or photo gallery platforms.

Although it’s all spiffy and such, 2.7-hemorrhage still has a lot of kinks to be worked out. The automated installation of plugins for one, and the Inbox, obviously. The automated installation of plugins does not quite work for me, although I was able to upgrade my plugins with a pre-2.7 install with no issues. I wonder if this will be addressed when the stable version is released come November. So far, this is the only issue I am having with 2.7-hemorrhage. Hopefully, the latest release will have all the features listed here fully functioning. And about the Inbox, it would be really helpful if there was more information about this new feature.

Another thing to look forward to is the automated upgrade of the WordPress install itself, though there are a lot of things that could go wrong here. It may be included in 2.7, but your mileage may vary. Nothing to do but to keep those fingers crossed.

I finally had a small taste of 2.7, and I am wanting more. I can’t wait to have this installed on my blog. When’s November coming?

Shutterview redesign/reconstruction is (almost) finished. This might signal the end of uploading picture galleries here. Next project would be to redesign this blog with a more minimalist theme.

So the cat is out of the bag. Google Chrome has been released. For those who haven’t heard of it, Google Chrome is a browser in which Google designed the way they think a browser should be: a desktop application for web applications.

Simply put, Chrome is a web browser. But of course, with Google, it’s not just a simple browser. Chrome uses the Webkit engine, the very same engine that powers Safari. Webkit is a lot like Gecko, the engine that powers Mozilla Firefox, only faster. A lot faster. And as with all things Google touches, Webkit was greatly improved, hence it is really much faster than what Safari is using, and it all boils down to how fast the browser can interpret, or execute, javascript. And since Google relies heavily on javascript for its web applications, such as GMail, Google Calendar, etc. Google designed its own javascript handler for Webkit. Instead of letting Webkit use its own javascript handler, Google redesigned how Webkit handles javascript. Instead of one process handling multiple threads of javascript, they decided it would be better to have multiple processes handling one thread of javascript. This would make the web application respond faster and more stable. At least, that’s how I understood it from their comic.

I’ve been using Chrome since its launch. It doesn’t have any extensions available yet, and I haven’t seen an option to add some, but it is still too early in the beta stage to expect something as robust as Mozilla Firefox 3. And Google promises to release an API for developers, so it would simply be a matter of time before extensions, add-ons, or hacks start popping up.

What I like about Chrome is the way it lets you maximize the virtual real estate you see when viewing web pages. There is no menu bar, just a button to house the browser options and other settings, and another button that houses options for the web page itself. The status bar usually found at the bottom of the window is only there when hovering over a link or when loading a page. It fades out as soon as the page finishes loading. As with tabbed browsing, the tabs are up top, away from the web page’s content. The focus is on the content, not on the browser. There are times that I forget I have other tabs open simply because I was too focused on what I was doing on one tab. The navigation buttons are simple, and there is no stop button. Since you can always press the Esc key to stop loading a web page, you don’t have to bother moving your mouse to click on the stop button. Also, the home button has become optional since they introduced the New Tab page. It displays thumbnail screenshots of the nine (9) most recent web pages you have frequented, and it also displays a list of your most recently closed tabs. It also displays a list of your recent bookmarks. And speaking of bookmarks, it is optional to have it integrated with the browser itself. I wonder when and how they will integrate Chrome with a Google Account. Incognito browsing lets you “plan a surprise party” with confidence that no one will know what you were doing. The “Omnibox” integrates the address bar and the search bar, taking a page from Mozilla Firefox 3’s Awesome bar but a little more “evolved.” And Chrome has its own task manager.

I’m loving Chrome so far, but I have seen some quirks and eccentrities in its ingenuity. One is the overflowing text when typing in a text field in Plurk. It may be a CSS issue, or a Plurk issue, since I haven’t seen this appear in other sites. That, or I’m not websurfing enough. Another is the smoothness of rounded corners. Although it supports CSS-enabled rounded corners due to Webkit’s standards compliance, Mozilla Firefox renders the rounded corners more smoothly. Ajax is sometimes quirky, but most of the time, it works, and it’s the same with Flash – videos or sites itself. I can’t say much about Gears as I don’t encounter much implementations as I should. Chrome is also resource hungry, as my desktop PC slowed to a crawl when my antivirus started its scheduled scan. I also checked the task manager, the Windows Task Manager, and it indicated that Chrome used about half of my physical memory. Also, a bug I found in Chrome is when I tried accessing my router. I didn’t bother setting up a password for it, so I just leave the username field blank, and typed in the default password. Chrome would not let me proceed without filling in the username field. So I went back to Firefox to setup a router password and then tried Chrome to try accessing my router again. With the admin username and the password I set, it allowed me to access the router admin page. Chrome may have forced me to add a router password, but it should let me in and do exactly that using Chrome itself. I wonder how Google will address this in Mac and Linux. I would so love it if Chrome’s Linux version had an Ubuntu-flavored color/theme.

Features I would like to see added to Chrome in the future would be the ability to change the color of the window, or theming capabilities. Also, the ability to add extensions that are much like FireFTP, Stumbleupon, Delicious, and Foxmarks. I would have asked for Firebug, but when I tried the Inspect Element in the context menu, it showed me something that was achingly, very similar to Firebug.

After searching for Chrome tips and tricks, hacks, and such, I stumbled upon an article from TechCrunch that may have proven what Google is actually aiming for, and it made sense. Google, with Chrome, is not really aiming for, or joining, a browser war. Right now, I’m about 70% sure I’ll switch to Chrome and leave Firefox forever. But it’s not just that. Google is joining the OS wars. With everything being put in the cloud these days, one would only need a browser to do whatever they need to do. And computers are being developed to simply use a browser without an operating system. The birth of the cloud computer is near.

To Google and the Chrome developers, a tip of the hat or a pat on the back may not be enough and a big thank you is all I can manage to give you. This is a job well done. You may be evil, but you are so good at being evil. I simply can’t wait for the next iteration of this great application.