We have recently released version 5.8 “Tatum”. This release is named after Art Tatum, the legendary Jazz pianist. Tatum had a formidable technique and willingness to push boundaries inspired musicians and changed what people thought could be done.
You can use a music service of choice and enjoy Tatum’s famous recordings of ‘Tea for Two’, ‘Tiger Rag’, ‘Begin the Beguine’, and ‘Night and Day’ as you read about what the latest WordPress version brings to you.
Three Essential Features
Manage Widgets with Blocks
Now you can use the Block Widgets Editor and the Customizer together. Easily add blocks both in widget areas across your site and also get a live preview through the Customizer. For the developers, you can find more details in the Widgets dev note.
Display Posts with New Blocks and Patterns
The Query Loop Block will now allow you to display posts based on the parameters you specify; like a PHP loop without the code. Now display posts from a specific category, and also do things like creating a portfolio or a page full of your favorite recipes. This is just a more complex and powerful Latest Posts Block.
Edit the Templates Around Posts
Use the familiar block editor to edit templates that hold your content. You just need to activate a block theme or a theme that has this feature available. Now you can easily switch from editing your posts to editing your pages and back again while using the block editor. Now there are more than 20 new blocks available within compatible themes. You can read more about this feature in the release notes.
Three Workflow Helpers
Overview of the Page Structure
Sometimes a landing page will work, but sometimes you need a page that is more descriptive. New patterns will emerge after new blocks are added which makes content creation easier. To easily navigate this complex content new solutions are needed. With, the List View you can easily jump between blocks and layers of content.
Since the List View gives you an overview of all the blocks in your content, you can now navigate quickly to the precise block you need. Ready to focus completely on your content? Toggle it on or off to suit your workflow.
Suggested Patterns for Blocks
When you start using this release, based on the block you are using the Pattern Transformations tool will suggest block patterns. Since it’s a new feature you can give it a try in the Query Block and Social Icon Block. Moving forward you can get inspiration for styling as more patterns are added.
Style and Colorize Images
With the duotone filter, you can colorize your image and cover blocks. You can enhance your designs and style images or videos using the duotone filter to integrate all your content with the theme. Also, you can add the duotone effect to add shadow and highlights of the colors you choose. You can learn more about this feature in the documentation.
For Developers to Explore
Theme.json
Now using a theme.json file in the active theme you will get Global Styles and Global Settings APIs: control the editor settings, available customization tools, and style blocks. You can set default styles for both the website and blocks, also you can enable or disable features with the configuration file. You can try and experiment with this new feature if you build themes. For more information, you can check out this dev note.
Dropping support for IE11
With this release, the support for Internet Explorer 11 has been dropped. Using this browser can cause issues managing the site that can’t be fixed in the future. It is strongly recommended to switch to a more modern browser if you are still using IE11.
Adding support for WebP
The WebP image format that provides provides lossy compression and a much more improve lossess for images on the web. In comparison JPEG or PNG are larger in size and a WebP iamge is almost 30% smaller. Using these will not only relsut in a fast website but also save much more speed.
Adding Additional Block Supports
Block supports were previouly implmented in WordPress 5.6 and 5.7, now with WordPress 5.8 many new options to customzie your blocks are avalible now. Also several new block support flags are introduced with this release. If uou need more information you can check the block supports dev note.
Check the Field Guide for more!
The latest version of the WordPress Field Guide highlights developer notes for each change you may want to be aware of: WordPress 5.8 Field Guide.