The new version of WordPress 3.4 has now been released. This release of WordPress has been named Green after guitarist Grant Green.

Some of the main features in this release include:

Theme customizationCustom headersTwitter embedsImage captions

Download

View the video below to see some of the new features.

Changes For Users

This release has some interesting changes which is going to help users make the most out of their theme. The theme customization feature allows the user to view their website side by side the theme options so they can see how the changes they are making will affect their site.

This makes it so easy for the user to be making theme settings changes and they will know that the changes they have made will look good without the changes going live. In the previous version of WordPress if you wanted to make changes to your website you had to do so on the live site. If you made a mistake then that mistake is live, if your site has a lot of traffic you could have visitors on your site seeing things happening to your theme settings, not ideal.

Embedded Tweets

Here is a nice little feature which can benefit a lot of bloggers which quotes tweets in their posts. WordPress 3.4 makes it extremely easy to embed a tweet on your post, all you have to do is paste the URL of the tweet in your post and it will automatically embed the Tweet in your post.

WordPress 3.4 is now out download it now wordpress.org/download/

— Paulund (@paulund_) June 13, 2012

GeneralProperly reflect the language on RSS feedsAdd support for DFW for all instances of the editorUpdate license.txt to include ‘How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs’ at the request of the FSF http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txtDashboardDashboard Widgets are available for translationHelp Tabs improvementsRemove Recently Updated from Plugins widgetAdd a link to the Customizer from the Admin Bar appearance menuImprove the Recent Comments dashboard widget performance on sites with large amounts of commentsPostsAdd new comment from post edit screenDisplay menu_order value in Quick Edit for non-hierarchical post typesChange ‘Post Format’ bulk/quick edit label to ‘Format’MediaHTML support has been added to image caption fieldAdd Twitter.com as an oEmbed providersLinksDefault Links are now available for translationCommentsRemove “Approve” bulk action when viewing spam comments as it isn’t shown in the row actionsAppearanceUpdate the Theme Customizer in Twenty Ten and Twenty Eleven themesFaster theme searchingPost formats should show_in_nav_menus when the current theme supports themInfinite scroll for themes.php and theme-install.php. Bump per page limit for themes.php to 999Add Sort by, and Number of Links to show, to the Links widgetIntroduce new registration methods for custom headers and custom backgroundsDefault to keyword searches for the theme installerContextual help updatesUpdate install screens to use the new starsPluginsClean up the Plugin installer screenshots page; adds CSS resize support to the images to prevent them requiring scrolling and falling below the FYI boxDefault to keyword searches for the plugin installerUpdate install screens to use the new starsToolsBump WXR_VERSION because of plugins trac 501867 / r19858 which affects the regex based importerUpdate contextual helpUsersAfter adding a user, take them back to users.php with an ‘Edit user’ link in the messageCorrect how “Display name publicly as” works when other name fields changeSettingsUpdate color scheme definition for gray admin themeUse blue arrows for blue admin’s screen options and help tabs; adjust baseline to be more compatible with FirefoxTimezone and start of week can now be specify through translated strings (rather than PHP)Install ProcessDon’t allow empty database prefix for multisiteIssue an error during the WordPress install process if wp-config.php is configured with an empty database table prefix, which is not supportedRemove references to specific search enginesMultisiteBetter checking for values for multisite upload limitOnly allow _multisite_ super admins to demote themselves on a siteCreate a network/about.php page and leverage it, to prevent the dashboard from switching to the blog adminAdd an “Edit Site” submenu to the admin bar site menu when a super admin visits a blog dashboardAutocomplete for add-user screensDo not save the last visited tab on the multisite Network Themes page and Site Themes tabMake ‘Network Activate’ a bulk action on network/plugins.phpIncrease default upload space for sites on a network from 10M to 100MClean up plugins.php with regards to recently edited files, deactivations, and the network adminChanges For Developers

With the new theme customizer there are loads of new features for developers to get your hands on. Here is a list of some of the new features that can be found in WordPress 3.4.

Add a filter to wp_terms_checklist() that wraps the function’s arguments; mainly designed to allow checked_ontop to be turned off Add WP_Screen methods get_help_tabs(), get_help_tab( $id ), get_help_sidebar(). Store help tabs by tab ID, not numeric key; allows proper removal with remove_help_tab( $id ) Add ‘ep_mask’ as an argument to the ‘rewrite’ array for register_post_type() and register_taxonomy(); keeps ‘permalink_epmask’ compatible as an argument for post type registrations; fixes endpoints for category and tag pages Add jQuery UI Touch Punch plugin to handle dragging on mobile devices Add post ID argument to _wp_post_thumbnail_html() rather than relying on a global; post the ID from wp_ajax_set_post_thumbnail() Add ‘search_columns’ arg to WP_User_Query to allow for explicit column choices; without it columns will be detected based on the search term Add the editor ID and the post type (when available) as classes to the TinyMCE’s body Add $id parameter to get_the_tag_list() for consistency with get_the_(category|term)_list(). Allow get_post_meta() to be called with only a post ID, as get_metadata() handles this Allow counting by characters in lieu of a word count, for East Asian languages Allow toolbar submenus to expand to the width of the parent item Allow translators to specify a default timezone string OR GMT offset. Stop doing date(‘Z’)/3600 math for default ‘gmt_offset’ AtomServer class moved to wp-includes/class-wp-atom-server.php Change the image caption shortcode format to caption text + html; that way HTML tags in captions are better supported and the shortcode wouldn’t break when using the wrong quotes Check the return of wp_insert_term() for WP_Error or array; pffrevents fatal erros and failure to add categories when adding terms via ajax Cleanup and better document create_initial_taxonomies() Clear strict notices for the walkers Compress CSS/JS using the latest version of YUI Compressor Create WP_Customize_Control to separate the process of rendering a control from fetching, previewing, and saving its value Database schema change: Change ‘post_content_filtered’ to longtext in ‘wp_posts’ table Database schema change: Drop ‘comment_approved’ index from ‘wp_comments’ table Database schema change: Remove ‘blog_id’ column from ‘wp_options’ table Define WPINC in wp-load when not set in wp-config.php Deprecate add_custom_background() in favor of add_theme_support( ‘custom-background’ ) Deprecate add_custom_image_header() in favor of add_theme_support( ‘custom-header’ ) Deprecate display_theme() Deprecate get_theme_data() in favor of wp_get_theme() Do not block file mod/edit caps when DISALLOW_UNFILTERED_HTML is set; There are separate constants (DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT and DISALLOW_FILE_MODS for those) Fix the return value of get_theme_root() when the theme root is outside of WP_CONTENT_DIR, thus making it absolute rather than the typical relative theme root; make get_theme_root_uri() tolerate an absolute path for a theme root; it will now make an attempt to find a corresponding URL for absolute paths as well. Fixed “https” detection in feed generator Formatting and i18n cleanup of repair.php Hash post password in cookies Improve adding more css classes to the editor body, add “rtl”, “ie7″, “ie8″, “ie9″ so they can be targeted in editor-style.cs Improve efficiency of make_clickable() Improve wp-app.php; put the atom server class in class-wp-atom-server.php; remove log_api calls; update the query filter; replace exit calls with wp_die() for unit test compat; add override handler for wp_die(); allow plugins to replace the atom class In case of 404, redirect /login, /dashboard, /admin to corresponding WordPress equivalents Introduce $wpdb->delete() Introduce set_header_image(), remove_header_image(), reset_header_image() and get_header_image_data() Introduce WP_Theme class, wp_get_themes(), and wp_get_theme() to replace get_themes(), get_theme(), get_theme_data(), current_theme_info(), and others Introduce __return_null() Introduce display_header_text() Introduce get_page_template_slug( $id = null ) to return a page’s template (like “showcase.php”); returns false if post ID is not a page, and an empty string for the default page template; use the function across core Introduce sanitize_trackback_urls(); don’t ping bad urls, or save them to the DB Introduce term_is_ancestor_of() Introduce term_is_ancestor_of(); finish taxonomy support for wp_insert_category() Introduce wp_is_mobile() and use it instead of $is_iphone global Introduce wp_load_translations_early() which can be used before the locale is properly loaded in order to translate early error strings; internationalize setup-config.php — translators no longer have a reason to modify this file Introduce ‘relative’ scheme to return only the paths for home_url, site, admin, network_, and get_ variants Introduce WP_Theme->exists() to check if the queried theme actually exist; WP_Theme->exists() is a subset of errors(); a theme with errors may still exist, but a theme that does not exist has an error of theme_not_found; wp_get_theme() now returns false if the theme does not exist; improve scandir() and get_files() logic Introduce WP_User::exists() Lose EOF