WordPress 4.8, named after the jazz pianist and composer William John “Bill” Evans, is the first major update for WordPress in 2017 with longer development cycle compared to previous 3 years.
WordPress 4.8 was lead by Matt Mullenweg and Jeff Paul and includes contributions from 346 contributors (106 for the first time).
Last time WordPress got new widgets was in version 3.0 in 2010, and now WordPress 4.8 includes 3 new widgets: Image, Video and Audio with Text widget using the rich (TinyMCE Lite) editor. All new widgets are very simple, but they work well, and they are easy to configure using Media Library to add or link images, videos and audio files.
If you are interested in WordCamps and meetups, new dashboard widget is a nice addition, allowing you to see events close by (you can set the country or city). For regular WordPress users, this is not very useful addition, but, it may useful to bring new users to WordPress events. This widget shows also latest news from the WordPress.org.
Other changes include updates to the editor: new TinyMCE version, improvements to editing with better detection and handling of the link boundaries. And, changes under the hood: useful multisite improvements and new functions, admin panel accessibility improvements, JavaScript API for the TinyMCE editor loading, media widgets API based on the REST API, Customizer variable width and more.
When it comes to Dev4Press plugins compatibility, all tests so far, show that all Pro plugins work with new WordPress, and I will post more about that in a few days. If you find any WordPress 4.8 related issues, let me know.
