WordPress version 4.1 was released for public use on 18th December and named as “Dinah” to honor the jazz singer Dinah Washington. You can update your existing version from admin dashboard or download the file from wordpress.org site. Here we discuss the new and updated features in WordPress 4.1 version for a common user.
New Theme – Twenty Fifteen
Being the last update in 2014 default theme for the next year 2015 has been added in WordPress 4.1. Twenty fifteen theme focuses on mobile approach for bloggers and uses Google’s Noto font family for multiple language support.
Distraction Free Writing
Distraction free writing is improved by avoiding the popup and uses mouse over function. When the distraction free writing icon is clicked the sidebar and menu are automatically sliding out and when you move the mouse outside the content the sidebar and menu will appear again. This helps to focus on writing without the need of going to additional screen as in previous version.
Note: The flexibility of using the keyboard shortcuts “Command and +” or “Control and +” to adjust the width of the editor’s width is reduced to an extent with the design. There also seem to be a bug that the distraction free writing icon is not turning off even after the menu and meta boxes are enabled. This means you need to click twice to disable and enable it again.
Plugin Recommendations
New “Recommendations” tab is added in the “Add New” screen of plugin management. WordPress will recommend the plugins to try out based on the existing plugins installed on your site.
Inline Image Toolbar
New inline image toolbar is introduced which can be seen when clicked on an image inside the post editor.
You can do alignments within the editor without going to the popup screen.
Language Settings
Now you can choose the language right from “Settings > General” of your WordPress admin dashboard.
Logout Previous Sessions Anywhere
Forgot logout your session in a shared computer? WordPress 4.1 has a solution now. Just go to your user profile and see what are the locations you are currently logged in. Click on the button “Log Out of All Other Sessions” to logout all sessions except the current one.
Vine Video Embedding
In addition to all the above features now you can embed videos from Vine into your WordPress site just by pasting the URL similar to YouTube videos.
Note: If you want to revert back to old WordPress version for some reasons then you can download the required version from WordPress release archives.
