More Avatars?
At first I thought, new default avatars? What’s so exciting about this? (Avatar is the display/photo profile next to your comments).
Upon a closer look, WordPress 2.6 actually provides a uniquely generated avatar based on your email address, if you haven’t got a Gravatar set-up yourself!
Before, if you haven’t set your own Gravatar (in which you can set in under 1 minute), your display picture will show the “mystery man” avatar.
Now, I can choose automatically generated gravatar for you all! Unfortunately, you may not like it. Well, you don’t have a choice, unless you have your own Gravatar set-up 
I can now select which avatars’ category to be generated for you
Some sample avatars generated by this new feature:
- Identicon
- Wavatar
- MonsterID
I chose the MonsterID as I think it’s quite cute to see what it can come up with. If you hate to be associated with a cute monster icon, then get yourself your own Gravatar And No, unfortunately you can’t choose what monster you’d want to be associated with as they are uniquely hash-generated. Read here if you want to know more about the algorithm or technology behind this.
Press This Shortcuts
Press this? Before you associate it with “Click this”, it actually has a different meaning. “Press This” is more like “Blog This”. If you are browsing a good site or news that you want to blog about, then having this “Press This” link on your Favorites or Bookmarks is very handy.
By clicking on it, a “mini” panel will be opened containing your WordPress “Write Post” screen – scaled down. This is useful if you want to quickly spread news about what you just saw/read.
Some other enhancements of WordPress 2.6 Beta 1:
- Plug-ins are organized better now – grouping active and non-active
- Post Revision – not so useful for me though. You can view all your saved changes and also compare different revisions. CVS a la WordPress!
Bug fixes that I can notice:
- I can now upload multiple files in one go, just like what it’s supposed to
- I can now see the progress bar when uploading files
Problems:
- Heard of bugs when trying to delete plug-ins through the admin, so stay out of it if you can
- I still get the “Loading…” texts everywhere on my Dashboard
- Pressing ENTER for more new lines don’t actually add extra newlines on the paragraphs – formatting lost after saving
- Can’t select/insert/delete an uploaded image. Clicking on the “Show” on any image on the Gallery does nothing. You can get around this by going through the “Media Library” instead.
For a complete list of changes, please make sure you read it on the official release blog. To upgrade or not to upgrade, that’s a question that you have to answer yourself, unfortunately
Feel free to spread the word about this post!
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Wonderful! I’m kind of curious about this “Press This” thing. Are you saying we need to manually add the “Press This” link on the browser tool bar?
You make me want to do it now, you know? Perhaps I’ll wait for another week or so till they sort out some of the bugs.
Yan@Blog for Beginnerss last blog post..I Guess This Is When I Say “Thank You”
It is very funny really i just upload the 25.5 version on my wordpress blog then just to know that this beta version is out already… Again i will wait till this version is stable already…
julers last blog post..Hope I win this contest in Ez DIY Electricity
I’ll try to install it and hope it doesn’t mess up other plugins
archondigitals last blog post..Entrecard Top Ten – June 2008
Mike, I agree with everything you have said here. I loaded it on my second blog and even with quite a few plugins I experienced no problems. I do miss the old button in the post area to add graphics to your post but I suppose I must just get used to the new way of doing things. For a long time now I have put off learning how the whole Media Library thing works, I must make a plan.
sailors last blog post..Firefox in your pocket
@Yan: Yeah, I believe so. I don’t think I’m gonna use it though. I’ll just open my WordPress Admin link manually
@Sailor: Well, people don’t normally like changes, even if it’s for the better
Others: Have a go at it if you like to playwith the “latest toys” heh heh
Ok one of my blogs is going to be a victim of this version..
Sounds like there are some cool features..
Thanks for the info
i installed it yesterday and it’s really really good and worth turning to
ameos last blog post..more opera addons extensions
Haven’t installed it yet.
Will install it right away and see how it is…
Nihars last blog post..Speed up your disk – Auslogics Disk Defrag
Hope you guys like it
Looking forward for Beta 2
Not ready to be a test dummy yet, but I have been reading the WP forum.
Frank Js last blog post..Icahn and Ballmer Bullying Yang and Yahoo’s board