Just a few minutes back Wordpress has released a splashing new RC version of the upcoming Wordpress known as Wordpress 2.5. Well Wordpress badly needed an upgrade so the Wordpress team finally built it up from the ground again. It has completely new looks with great features. All the codes remains the same, the thing which has changed is the admin’s interface. A cool icy look with pleasant colors has been brought to the overall interface. The width of content area in Admin panel has been limited to a maximum of around 990 pixels. Still we don’t know that its a bug or they have done it willingly.

Dashboard
Wordpress guys finally realized that most of their users were feeling the dashboard to be nothing more than a crap. So they finally bought some nice changes & colors. But still the “Other Wordpress News” doesn’t have a option to be removed, making a bit of crapware still to be seen. Plugins news is the new feature which can be seen here.

Navigation

The navigation tabs have been cut to a number of four namely Write, Mange, Design, Content. A new bar at the top has been created seems to be inspired by the Blogger Navbar as the looks are same just the functionality differs. The link to Dashboard has been placed there while Login details are aligned to the right side. Two new links found with login details are Help linking to Wordpress Codex and the other Forums pointing towards Wordpress Support. Settings, Plugins, Users have been aligned to the right end of the tabs. Overall making the navigation quite precise, Wordpress users will enjoy simple & useful navigation throughout their blogging time.Write
The writing panel gets a new feature “Full Screen Mode”. As the name indicates this new feature allows a user not to be distracted by other elements in the writing page just the Visual Editor can be seen. But wait it don’t takes to total full screen, it is limited within the browser. So you will have to get your browser also to full screen mode to get the perfect non-distracting experience. The other new feature in writing panel is the Permalink Editor. This allows you to edit the permanent link of the post.You now also have the functionality of uploading audio, video, pictures, files within the Wordpress Admin Zone. These can be accessed while writing or editing a post or a page.

Also the ‘Write’ tab gets a new addition of “Link” which has been derived from the previous ‘Blogroll’. Blogroll can now also be managed from the ‘Manage’ tab as the Blogroll is now being treated as under writing & managing tasks.Manage
Coming over to manage tab, some new features like managing tags, link, link categories has been added with Posts, Pages & Categories. And the main new feature here is the Media Library. It allows you to manage your uploaded assets for the post. All videos, audio, pictures, etc. can be managed here. Links can be edited from the links tab and additional information can be added to the links.

Import & Export feature still exist there as they are the primary features to backup and restore your blog.

Design
Designed derived from the Presentation tab in previous builds contain the same Themes, Widgets, and the Theme Editor. Theme & Theme Editor continues the same functionality while Widgets get a negative change i.e. the Drag & Drop thingy has been taken off and a simple Add-Edit has been introduced.

Comments
The comments tab seems to have same functions with a little bit changes. Instead of ‘View Mode’ & ‘Mass Edit Mode’, ‘Detail View’ & ‘List View’ has been written. But a good new feature is when there is an awaiting comment it shows it in the main Comments Tab. (See Picture)

Overall the nice changes and light colors give Wordpress a useful rebirth but the disappointing thing is that still no work of AJAX is to been seen there.

Links
Download: Wordpress 2.5 Release Candidate is now available for download. Wordpress team says it is ready for the final launch and they might have done it today but still in order to retest they have released a RC version to let the interested users try it and report the bugs to them if any. However when I had a test on it, it seem to work properly. So interested users might give it a try.
Download Wordpress 2.5 Release Candidate 1
Report A Bug by joining testers mailing list or e-mail it here.

Installation & Upgrade: As the file names are almost the same, the normal installing & upgrade methods of previous builds can be used. Still here are the links:
Installing the Wordpress
Upgrading the Wordpress

On Wordpress Blog: Read about Wordpress 2.5 on Wordpress Blog here.