Matt Mullenweg, the guy leading efforts at WordPress, revealed in a blog post earlier tonight that Sonny is ready for prime time. Sonny of course is the traditional Jazz Musician based code name for the third major update to WordPress since it hit version 3.0 in June 2010.
WordPress has had over 65 million downloads since version 3.0 was released, and in this third major iteration we’ve added significant polish around the new user experience, navigation, uploading, and imports.
You can find WordPress 3.3 at the WordPress.org Download Page or in the admin panel of your WordPress installation. I updated all of my sites, five of them, in less than 5 minutes total. They also now provide a nice update summary page at the end of the update process which explains the features and tweaks made to the latest version.
Here is the intro to WordPress 3.3 Video:
Matt also shared a brief run down of the features for users and developers:
For Users
Experienced users will appreciate the new drag-and-drop uploader, hover menus for the navigation, the new toolbar, improved co-editing support, and the new Tumblr importer. We’ve also been thinking a ton about what the WordPress experience is like for people completely new to the software. Version 3.3 has significant improvements there with pointer tips for new features included in each update, a friendly welcome message for first-time users, and revamped help tabs throughout the interface. Finally we’ve improved the dashboard experience on the iPad and other tablets with better touch support.
For Developers
There is a ton of candy for developers as well. I’d recommend starting your exploration with the new editor API, new jQuery version, better ways to hook into the help screens, more performant post-slug-only permalinks, and of course the entire list of improvements on the Codex and in Trac.
Finally, want to take a peek at how fast this newest version is being download by folks across the Internet? Check out the WordPress 3.3 Download Tracker. For reference here is what that counter showed when I posted this to the site:
So, how high is it when you checked? Let us know in the comments.
