Image by Wolanka

All you WordPress fans will be glad to hear that the frequently updated and marvellous WordPress is soon to release a new update, WordPress 2.9.

I’ve had a look at the beta on a test install and there’s a few really nice features.

1. Image Editing
   Yep, they’ve introduced an image editor – something that will, no doubt, prove extremely handy for both myself and clients that have sites run off WordPress. It’s a fairly basic editor – crop, resize, rotate, but that’s all I’d really want it for. Simple and fast!
2. Post Thumbnails
   There’s been innumerable ways to alter WordPress to include a thumbnail image in your post-excerpt, they’ve now decided to build this functionality into the core. I think this is great as it will make life a little easier.
3. Easy Embedding
   WordPress 2.9 is now going to support a facility called oEmbed, which is sort of like an open embedding framework supported by a number of large content distributors around the net. There’s a detailed post about it over on Viper Bond’s ¹ website: Easy Embeds for WordPress 2.9
4. Trash
   Not sure about deleting stuff, but annoyed that it’s taking up your screen space? Now WordPress has a “trash” function!

They’re the major new features as far as I can make out – there’s a whole rake of other improvements which will be fully detailed on the WordPress Codex page for the 2.9 release.