As it was announced, wordpress 2.6 has been released and ready for public use. Soon, this blog will be updated to 2.6 as well.

There are some new and neat features in 2.6. Since they have made a 3 minute video and I have to catch a flight, I won’t write much I’ll just provide the link. Here is the link to the official annoucement page for 2.6 at Wordpress Dev Blog. This release also called Tyner, named after Jazz Pianist McCoy Tyner.

Here is a small list of new features from wordpress dev blog

Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.

Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.

Bulk management of plugins.

A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.

Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.

Plugin update notification bubble.

………

Allright, we are a step closer to wordpress 2.6. A release candidate has been released last weekend and it’s ready for use.

Here is the direct download link for RC1

• Click here to Download Wordpress 2.6 RC1

Even though I haven’t tested this new release yet, it looks like 2.6 is going to be a good improvent after 2.5.1.  Also, they are planing to release another version today. As they announced before, they were planing to release a stable version in mid July. So it’s probably going to be the final release. For more information, you can go to Boren’s site to read the last announcement on this.

Here is a list of couple of features;

• Media uploader and gallery improvements
• Image caption and image editing fixes
• Press This fixes
• Ability to toggle between the flash uploader and a regular browser uploader
• Notification bubble on the Plugins menu when plugin updates are available

A link is avaliable at boren’s site for full list of features.

Wordpress 2.6 Beta 1 is avaliable for download. An announcement has been made by Ryan Boren. Lead developer Ryan Boren says that they will be expecting a release in mid-July. There are some new features been added to 2.6.

• Download Link

Here is a small list of new features, you can click here to read Ryan Boren’s post about this release and to see the full list of new features.

• Theme previewing as seen on WordPress.com
• Built-in word counting in the post editor
• The ability to disable remote publishing for the security conscious
• XML-RPC API for changing blog options
• Better SSL support for the Admin
• Hierarchy-aware paging in the Manage Pages and Manage Categories admin pages.
• The ability to relocate your content directory
• The ability to move wp-config.php out of your web root
• Drag-and-drop sortable galleries
• Customizable default avatars

A demo is available at here. You can access to admin panel and see the new features.