If there has been one glaring problem with WordPress for new users- it’s been the posting of pictures- from, like, day 1. While the tools have gotten better, there are still way too many steps and choices involved in “insert picture here” – 2.9 hopefully is going to solve some of those problems:

Images now feel more at home in the publishing process, thanks to the integration of image editing.

For example, you’ll now find a built in image editor. To edit your images, head to your media library, choose the image you want to change, and click on the new “Edit Image” button. There’s a crop tool… which you can also set the aspect ratio for… in addition to image rotation, and horizontal and vertical image flipping.

Media embedding has also undergone a major makeover. Support for the oEmbed standard makes copying and pasting video URLs right into your post super-simple.

Now all you need to do is paste the URL onto a line of its own… Use the new embed shortcode if you don’t want to separate it onto it’s own line… Or “Add Video From URL” from the visual editor icon. And you’re good to go.

By default you’ll find that there’s support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, & WordPress.tv, with more on the way.

via Version 2.9 « WordPress Codex.

No more plugins to insert videos, editing of pictures including cropping and manipulation of image position. Now, let’s hope there is only one “Media” button instead of four to click. Simplification is key if you really live the WordPress developers Automattic’s tagline “code is poetry.”

Just had a client running 2.3 wonder what the new version looked like (2.8.2) and how it would change his site.  I explained, that other than his “supertheme” K2 may be a bit wonky with a new version of WP- the site would look the same to the viewer- but very different to him.

I did a search of the dashboard design- and found this great post with screen shots from the earliest WP to 2.7 – very interesting, especially to user interface designers:

With the recently launched WordPress 2.7, bloggers now marvel at how clean, beautiful and usable is the new interface. But do you remember what it used to be a couple of months ago? For those who started using WordPress years ago, can you remember what your admin area looked like?

via A Journey Through Five Years of WordPress Interface. « planetOzh.

We started with WordPress 1.2, the first of the “modern” dashboards. I have to say, that I agree with most assessment of the changes. The thing that has driven me mad the most, has been the playing with the “Press this” function through time- and the really crappy picture upload interface (4 choices that all present the same uploader screen is just LAME).

But, compared to other CMS options- WordPress remains the hands down simplest for the most effect.

If you haven’t discovered the Press This (formerly known as Press It) posting shortcut for WordPress yet, now is the time to do it. WordPress 2.7 has moved the bookmark from the Write Post page- to the Tools menu- where it should have been all along.

Here is the official description.

Press This

Press This is a bookmarklet: a little app that runs in your browser and lets you grab bits of the web.

Use Press This to clip text, images and videos from any web page. Then edit and add more straight from Press This before you save or publish it in a post on your blog.

Drag-and-drop the following link to your bookmarks bar or right click it and add it to your favorites for a posting shortcut.

The key to using PressThis is to make sure you have isolated an article to a single URL- and then highlight the text you want to discuss- hit your Press This bookmark that you’ve saved in your Firefox Bookmarks toolbar- and the text you highlighted will be put in a floating window- complete with a link back to the source. Blockquote what you Pressed- and write an open and close- and Voila! Instant high value content with less effort.