WordPress 4.9 is expected to be released on November 14, 2017. But with the first beta version of the upcoming CMS, you can check out the new features and changes coming.
Below we will see what comes with WordPress 4.9.
Note: You can test the beta version locally on your computer or in a staging environment using the WordPress Beta Tester.
Please note that WordPress 4.9 is still under development, so some of the features we describe may not be released in the final version.
Saving and scheduling theme changes in the Customizer
WordPress 4.9 will bring the emulation of theme customizations to a draft. So if you make changes to a theme using the customizer, you will have the option to save your changes as a draft instead of live.
This new feature will allow you to share a preview of your changes with a URL. You can send the URL to anyone to see the webpage with your changes before they go live.
The new Customizer can publish the changes you made at a specific time, since WordPress 4.9 will allow you to schedule the change.
New Gallery Widget
WordPress 4.8 brought new widgets for multimedia, rich text, audio, image, and video. WordPress 4.9 will bring a new Gallery Widget.
It will allow you to create a Gallery and add it to all the widget areas your theme has.
Add Media Button to Text Widget
With the new text widget if you want to add an image, you won't have to write any code. With the new media button you can easily add images inside the Rich Text Widget.
Improved code editing experience
WordPress 4.9 will bring a much improved code editor for PHP code, and CSS, in the theme editor or plugin editor.
This code editor includes syntax highlighting, code suggestions, and auto-completion.
If there is a syntax error while editing your topic, then the new feature will automatically correct many of the common mistakes.
Don't like syntax highlighting? You can easily disable it from your user profile.
Various changes
Remove SWFUpload library from kernel. #41752
Recursive file search in plugin and theme editor. #6531
What would you like to see with the new WordPress?
