WordPress 2.9 is finally here with bunch of great new features, I won’t tell you what’s new but this blog post does have some great insights into what new.

Some of the new features that might interest you:

1. Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.
2. Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss. This is the first wave of our many planned media-handling improvements.
3. Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.
4. Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).

Oh yeah, download WordPress 2.9 here.

For WordPress theme developers, the new WordPress 2.9 will be a whole new ball game as it features ability to add post thumbnails.  For Zedomax.com, we have been using our own custom-code post thumbnails for the last 2 years but the new WordPress 2.9 means that we can use the built-in post thumbnails functionality to make the blog run faster.  This will of course happen relatively fast, let me go try it NOW!

Oh yeah, kudos to Matt the founder of WordPress for making it happen!

via wordpress