[wp-testers] 2.9-beta-1 is available

[Mark Jaquith]

http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.9-beta-1.zip

Big features to test:

• Basic image editing (rotate, flip, resize, crop)
• Post/Page image thumbnails. Enable the admin UI by declaring support
in your theme: add_theme_support('post-thumbnails');
• Trash, with undo functionality, for posts, pages, comments
• Comment Meta table and functions — like Custom Fields/postmeta but
for comments
• Easy media embeds, oEmbed — paste a URL on its own item and have it
turn into embed code
• register_theme_directory() which enables plugins to bundle their own
themes, without copying (BuddyPress, primary example)
• Combo upgrader — get notified of plugin updates in the WP core
upgrader, as well as being informed of crowd-sourced compatibility
information for the plugins.

It's bug-fixing and polishing time! Our priorities should be, in this order:

1. Fixing regressions in old features/behaviors
2. Squashing bugs in the new features
3. Polish

Big thanks to everyone who has contributed so far. Special thanks to
Viper007Bond for the media embed features. It makes something that
used to be really hard into the simplest thing in the world: paste in
the URL where you saw the media item. Boom. Remember, our job is to
make complicated things so simple that people don't have to think
about them. I would phrase "embed code" to disappear from our
vocabulary.

Let's all put our heads down, test the heck out of this thing, and
hopefully launch it in early December!

-- 
Mark Jaquith
• http://markjaquith.com/
• http://coveredwebservices.com/