One thing I love about WordPress (a blogging platform where this blog is powered by) is that the team keeps on updating it with new features and enhancements! Every new release always gave me an excitement of its own. This release may not be as big as WordPress 3.0, but it still packs with worthy enhancements and eye candy. So, what’s new in WordPress 3.2 (codenamed “Gershwin”)?
WordPress 3.2 – Design touch-ups
WordPress’ dashboard gets a few nice touch-ups, such as the menus on the Left sidebar, typography, and colors. Old WordPress 3.1 dashboard: 
New WordPress 3.2 dashboard: 
Sidebar close-up: 
As good as the sidebar’s new design, I still miss my Fluency plug-in (still waiting for an update to fully support WordPress 3.2). The Post Editor page has also received a few minor overhauls, especially the toolbar buttons. Old WordPress 3.1 Post Editor screen: 
New WordPress 3.2 Post Editor screen: 
New WordPress 3.2 Toolbar close-up: 
WordPress 3.2 Full Screen editing
Click on the “Toggle fullscreen mode” button on the toolbar and you will be taken to a full screen editing mode, clutter free, and distraction free. 
The toolbar will auto-hide itself, giving you a full plain background to write your post in peace. Hover your mouse and the toolbar is back to give you access to the formatting, hyperlinking button, or inserting a media file into your post. Since I blog most of the time with Windows Live Writer, this update does not really hit me. However, if you still write posts through your blog’s WordPress administration, this cool update is for you.
WordPress 3.2 performance improvements
According to the changelog, WordPress 3.2 is faster and smoother than the previous versions. It is a bit hard to justify this but we shouldn’t complain if we can get faster performance on our blogs, right? The admin dashboard widgets definitely load faster than before so I guess they are not bluffing after all.
WordPress 3.2 incremental upgrades
From WordPress 3.2 then on, upgrading is faster – as you only need to update the updated files and not the whole WordPress system. I wouldn’t worry about this anyway as I simply pressed that “Update” button on my WordPress dashboard whenever I wanted to update my WordPress system. Whatever happens behind the scene does not worry me. If you have permission problems or problems during the automated updates, this means you can upgrade faster by uploading fewer files manually through FTP.
WordPress 3.2 default Twenty Eleven theme
The default WordPress theme is now called Twenty Eleven, with full HTML5 support (if you care about it). I still love this Thesis theme so this update does not really bother me. However, it’s good to know that new WordPress bloggers can enjoy a fully featured theme like Twenty Eleven to get them started.
WordPress 3.2 other changes
According to the team, there are over 400 enhancements and fixes in WordPress 3.2. It may take some time for us to find them all (or maybe not all of them) but suffice to say, the best blogging platform just gets better and better! Check out What’s new in WordPress 3.2 changelog in full.
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