14 DAY TRIAL // WordPress has released the first beta of the upcoming WordPress 3.4. This first beta is aimed at getting the latest version in front of as many people as possible to iron out the kinks and squash bugs.
As such, it's not intended for production use and it's probably not a good idea to use it for your blog, unless you're willing to risk having it break.
WordPress 3.4 comes with a number of improvements and new features, as usual, several of them focusing on customization and looks.
"As always, this is software still in development and we don’t recommend that you run it on a production site — set up a test site just to play with the new version. If you break it (find a bug), please report it, and if you’re a developer, try to help us fix it," WordPress warned.
"If all goes well, we hope to release WordPress 3.4 in May. The more help we get with testing and fixing bugs, the sooner we will be able to release the final version," it added.
A Theme Customizer with a Previewer is a billed new feature. It's actually quite impressive, it's a replacement for the current theme previewer, but it's much more than that, it enables users to customize the look of a theme before using it on their blogs.
Things like colors, background colors, images, titles, menus and so on can all be customized via a relatively simple to use editor, rather than having to hack the code manually.
Plenty of modern WordPress themes come with customization options, but they're all one-offs, with different looks, features and so on. A consistent editor that works for all themes is a big improvement and it also means theme developers can focus on other, more important things.
There are several other improvements, like custom header and background images from the Media Library, and also several under-the-hood enhancements. The announcement has a summary of the most important ones.
WordPress 3.4 Beta 1 is avaialble for download here.