WordPress 4.2, “Powell”, was released on April 23rd, 2015 by project lead Drew Jaynes. However, make sure to update your WordPress site as soon as possible to 4.2.1 as a new XSS vulnerability has been found and squashed!
If you are a developer, you can learn more about the fix with this gist file.
With that said, let’s take a look at some of the features that came with the “Powell” release.
International Character Support
Perhaps one of the most important of the new features in the “Powell” release, 4.2.1 now comes with extended character support for Japanese, Chinese and Korean characters! Emojis are now also available for use in WordPress out of the box! Even mathematical
Plugin Update
The WordPress plugin admin screen will no longer redirect to a new page; instead, the process has become very streamlined.
Press This
The Press This button has been completely changed. You can now add the Press This! Button to your tollbar to share your favorite images, videos and other content. You can find the new ‘Press This’ button and options in the Tools menu in the WordPress admin dashboard. Go ahead and try it out!
Switching Themes in the Customizer
You can now switch themes in the Customizer!
Query Ordering Improvements
For developers out there, the WP_User_Query can now work with complex query ordering.
Other Features
You can find a list of other features here.
Don’t forget to update to version 4.2.1 as soon as possible!
