Exactly a week after the release of the second beta version, WordPress 4.9 Beta 3 was released on October 19 for the general public to test.
If you’ve been wanting to get your hands on WordPress 4.9, you can get the Beta 3 version from WordPress.org now. WordPress 4.9 Beta 3 is now available for testing with some updates. Updates include:
- The plugin/theme editors now show files in a scrollable expandable tree list. #24048
- The backward compatibility has now been improved for MediaElement.js, which is upgraded from 2.2 to 4.2. #42189
- When you create posts stubs in the Customizer, if you then schedule your customized changes or save them as a draft, then these Customizer-created posts will appear in the admin as “Customization Drafts”; the drafts can be edited before your customized changes are published, at which time these posts (or pages) will also be automatically published. #42220
- Bug fixes in theme browsing and installation in the Customizer, with some known remaining issues outstanding in Safari. #42215 #42212
- A newly added callout on the dashboard to install and activate Gutenberg. #41316
- Additional usability in Menus area in the Customizer. #36279 #42114
The software is still in development, so it is highly recommended to not run it on a production site. Consider setting up a test site just to play with the new version. To test WordPress 4.9, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”). Or you can download the beta here (zip).
For more information on what’s new in WordPress 4.9, check out our blog posts for Beta 1 and Beta 2. The core development team has made 70 changes in Beta 2 and 92 changes in Beta 3 since the release of Beta 1.
If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post it to the Alpha /Beta area in the support forums. If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.