WordPress 5.7 Beta 1 is now available for testing!

This software is still in development, so it’s not recommended to run this version on a production site. Consider setting up a test site to play with the new version.

You can test the WordPress 5.7 Beta 1 in two ways:

• Install/activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the Bleeding edge channel and the Beta/RC Only stream)
• Direct download the beta version here (zip).

The current target for final release is March 9, 2021. That’s just five weeks away, so your help is vital to making sure that the final release is as good as it can be.

So what’s new?

Improvements in Core

Lazy-load iframes
Now you can enable lazy-loading of iframes by adding the loading="lazy" attribute to iframe tags on the front-end. 

Migrating from HTTP to HTTPS is streamlined
Switching a WordPress site from HTTP to HTTPS has proven to be a pain for all involved. While on the surface, the Site Address and WordPress Address have to be updated, content with embedded HTTP URLs remains unchanged in the database. With this release, migrating a site to HTTPS is now a one-click interaction. URLs in the database are automatically replaced when the Site and WordPress Address are both using HTTPS.  Also, Site Health now includes an HTTPS status check.

Standardize colors used in WP-Admin CSS to a single palette
This change collapses all colors used in the CSS to one of the available shades of blue, green, red, yellow, grey, black, and white. The palette makes it simpler than ever to build components your users can read, because half the range gives you great contrast with white type and a half with black, according to current accessibility guidelines.

Ongoing cleanup after update to jQuery 3.5.1
jQuery deprecations in WordPress Core and bundled themes show up a lot less often, and the notifications make more sense to the user.

New Robots API
The new Robots API allows the filter directives to be included in the ‘robots’ meta tag. Also, the directive max-image-preview:large is now included by default to allow large image previews to be displayed in search engines (unless the blog is marked as not being public).

Improvements in the Editor

• Buttons block: Overhaul alignment and justification controls
• Buttons block: Adds variations for vertical layout
• Buttons block: Adds width selector
• Code block: Adds support for font sizes
• Cover block: Full Height Alignment control
• List block: Adds font size support
• Social Icons block: Adds Patreon, Telegram, and Tiktok icons
• Social Icons block: Adds the ability to change social icon sizes
• Spacer block: Use a semi-transparent background
• Adds block variations transformations
• Allow dragging blocks & block patterns from the inserter into the canvas

To see all of the features for each release in detail check out the Gutenberg release posts: 9.3, 9.4, 9.5, 9.6, 9.7, 9.8, and 9.9 (link forthcoming).

How You Can Help

Watch the Make WordPress Core blog for 5.7-related developer notes in the coming weeks, which will break down these and other changes in greater detail.

So far, contributors have fixed 143 tickets in WordPress 5.7, including 68 new features and enhancements, and more bug fixes are on the way.

Do some testing!

Testing for bugs is a vital part of polishing the release during the beta stage and a great way to contribute.

If you think you’ve found a bug, please post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We would love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac. That’s also where you can find a list of known bugs.

Props to @hellofromtonya, @sarahricker, @webcommsat, @marybaum, @jeffpaul, and @audrasjb for your peer revisions and @desrosj, @davidbaumwald, @cbringmann, and @chanthaboune for final review on this exciting news.

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