Testing out the new WordPress 2.5 release. There are some slick aspects to it, and it’s been cleaned up some. However, it’s still WordPress, for better or for worse. I guess it’s mostly “for better” (I’m still using it!) but there are some things that still bug me which I was hoping were addressed. I’ll list those in a moment, but I will say the ‘multiple media’ file upload (done in Flash) is a nice feature. Now if the Gnome/GTK file dialog didn’t suck so much, it’d be a really handy feature. 
Few things that have continued to bug me for many WP releases:
1. The editor really messes around with your formatting/htmlcode/etc. 2.5 is supposed to be better at this, from what I’ve read. My ‘grails for php developers’ got really messed up formatting-wise because of this. Re-editing posts is basically a non-starter.
2. Themeing. Lately my chosen theme kept being booted out and WP would default back to the blue/white standard. Hopefully this will stop.
3. Themeing – why is there no way to automatically browse and try out themes from within the system? Having to go download and then unzip files for stuff as basic as themes is a bit much. Is this just a security concern?
4. Template display of pages/categories/etc. I’ve got a lot of categories, and they just take up the whole sidebar. I’ve taken to modifying this theme and using div:overflow, but I wonder why that’s not more common in themes, or perhaps a default styling behaviour in WP itself.
These are just a few recent nitpicks. I’ve had some other beefs in the past, but they generally get fixed in newer releases. We’ll see how well this 2.5 holds up for awhile.
The Gnome/GTK file dialog thing in Firefox has always gotten on my nerves — especially because I use KDE and not Gnome for my windowing! I googled around for it and came up with this about:config tweak; think it’ll work better with the Flash multiple upload thing? I’m hesitant to upgrade to WP2.5 just yet; I run a lot of plugins (including a couple roll-your-owns) and prefer to wait until the plugin developers give their seal of approval.
Screenshot of the about:config tweak at http://preview.tinyurl.com/2kb8ou
Well, 2.5 didn’t fix the new template issue. I’m back on an older template, and hopefully this one will stick. I dunno what the problem was/is, but that last template (simpleblue) always eventually defaulted back to the original ‘classic’ WP theme.
I upgraded this morning and haven’t noticed any strange theme/template behavior. I am quite digging the refreshed admin side of things. I don’t use many plug-ins so I was safe on that front.
Hey Chris:
Just to clarify, I was having the template problem before upgrading as well. I think it was/is a simpleblue template problem (not sure tho).
Also, my ‘simpletags’ plugin stopped working, even after upgrading to the latest (which says it works with 2.5)
It looks like this theme is having issues with keeping the right column actually on the right as well.