New WordPress version 4.5, called “Coleman”, has just been released with a lot of exciting features. Before going to update your site with this WordPress version, you should know all new features available in this version.
1. Inline Linking
Aiming to help you focus on your writing and add links to your content easily, now you just select Insert/Edit Link icon in Text Editor or press Ctrl+K to show an inline insert link menu. Then, simply you type your URL and get back writing your post without removing your hands from keyboard.
2. Inline formatting shortcuts
Formatting shortcuts, first introduced in WordPress 4.3 allow you to quickly add formatting markup while writing posts. In this new WordPress 4.5, you can add a horizontal line easily by using three or more dashes. To add code, you just use backticks `code`.
To get full list of shortcuts available and enjoy better writing experience, you click on Help icon:
3. Live Responsive Previews
In WordPress 4.5, you can easily check responsiveness of your site on different screens: Desktop, tablet and mobile devices. Simply, you open Customizer and click on device icon:
4. Custom Logos
Not all themes allow users to add their logo images via Customizer. Although, there are many premium WordPress themes allowing users to upload logos in Theme Options, it is not standardized indeed. However, in WordPress 4.5, theme developers now can enable this feature and users can upload and adjust their logo easily via Customizer.
5. Previews for Site Icons
A slight improvement is applied for Site Icons – a feature allowing users to set a favicon for their websites. Unlike previous WordPress versions which let you see the site icon only when setting the image, this version 4.5 displays a preview in Site Identity panel that makes it easy to see how the favicon displays.
6. Optimized image generation
Since WordPress 4.4, responsive images became one of the major improvements. But in version 4.5, we can see new level of performance enhancements for images. You can refer here for more details about these improvements.
7. Login with email
Now, you can don’t need to worry about forgetting your username, because WordPress 4.5 allows you to use email address to login your dashboard.
8. Under the Hood
Besides above main improvements, there are lots of other new exciting features in this WordPress 4.5
• Selective Refresh: There is a new framework that allow selective refresh in Customizer. With this feature, it is not required to load entire page when something is changed.
• Script Loader Improvements: wp_add_inline_script() has been introduced
• Embed Templates: This WordPress version makes embed templates customizable and be split into parts; thus, developers can easily adjust these templates to meet their theme requirements
• JavaScript Library Updated: jQuery, jQuery Megrate, Backbone and Underscore are updated.
That’s a quick view on what’s new in WordPress 4.5. You can begin updating your site to this version. However, remember to have full backup before updating.