The first major release of 2021 is around the corner. As of now, it is expected to be released on the upcoming 9th March.
Four major updates are scheduled to release in 2021, and WordPress 5.7 is the first among them.
With some really impressive features and developments, this WordPress update already seems to be a promising one to the community.
The version comes with important core improvement along with newly added features to the block editor.
Continuation of the features like jQuery upgrade and auto-updates from the previous version and the additions of the new ones, there are a lot look forward to the 5.7 version of the most popular CMS.
In this article, we will go through the overview of what’s new to the latest WordPress version.
Core Improvements
- Simplified HTTP to HTTPS migration
- Lazy load iframes
- New Robots API
- Improved WP admin color palette
One-click HTTP to HTTPS migration
Moving your WordPress site from HTTP to HTTPS used to be a painful and troublesome task. You had to manually update embedded URLs and a little slip can cause blunders like the mixed content issues.
Finally, you can get rid of that annoying experience. All that distress has now simplified into one-click.
The new WordPress update automatically replaces all the URLs in the database when both the site and WordPress address are using HTTPS.
With improved HTTPS detection and migration, the site health now includes an HTTPS status check. This is to show the availability of HTTPS addresses.
Default lazy load added to iFrames
A feature that will boost your website speed. WordPress 5.7 comes with default lazy loading.
Usually, media files like videos or images take a lot of space and slow down web pages. To avoid this mess, people use iframe to show media files.
When you include iframe in the webpage, it adds loading = “lazy” attribute to iframes by itself.
Improving from versions 5.5 and 5.6, where they only used the feature for images, all embeds will now be lazy-loaded. This helps speed up your webpage more than ever.
New Robot API and max-image-preview
Developers now have central control over the robots meta tag with the introduction of the filter based Robot API.
In the 5.7 release, newly included wp_robots() function allows changing robots meta tag by adding custom filters.
The new WordPress update also comes with a directive added to the robot meta tag called max-image-preview:large. The directive allows the search engine to show the large image in search result preview.
Standardized WordPress admin Color Palette
The newest wordpress version introduces CSS custom properties to the WordPress admin.
Previously there used to be a limited set of color schemes available for the admin dashboard. Site admins had to use the prebuild colors.
Although it was possible to add new color schemes using Sass variable-based system. The process was hard to implement.
In this version, WordPress iterates all the used color and shrink them into one functional color palette. This provides a palette of a wide range with great contrast and dark color modes.
Improvements to block editor
From users to developers, the block editor is always in the focus. WordPress also makes many new improvements in the default editor to compete with other page builders.
WordPress 5.7 includes Gutenberg 9.9 that comes with many new features and improvements.
Here are some major changes made to the new WordPress version:
Drag and Drop
The new version includes a drag and drop feature. Now, you can simply drag any block from inserter and place it anywhere you want.
Full height blocks
The 5.7 version lets you use the entire screen to display blocks like cover blocks and others. When you toggle to full height, blocks will fill the entire screen of user screen.
Block variations with preview
Now you can show preview in block inspector for the blocks that have multiple items. You have the option to add icons and descriptions of block variations.
There is more for the block editor in the newest WordPress update
WordPress 5.7 comes with a bunch of new addition to the block editor. It lets you adjust icon size for social media icon blocks.
You can set the font size for ‘more blocks’ like code and list block. Vertical alignment for buttons is also introduced to the editor with this update.
Wrapping it up
Already the popular content management system around the world, WordPress is getting better with every update. They are adding more and user-friendly features to help users build websites with ease.
First of the four scheduled updates of the year, WordPress 5.7 added some really magnificent features.
Additions like drag and drop from inserted, lazy loading iframes, and easy HTTP to HTTPS make it look promising. And from the testing of the meta version, updates to looking workable all the way.
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