Wordpress 2.9 beta 1 and Wordpress MU 2.8.6

Hot off the trails from last week’s Wordcamp NYC, the official 2.9 Beta 1 release is now available for download.

From Mark via the wp-hackers mailing list:

Big features to test:

• Basic image editing (rotate, flip, resize, crop)
• Post/Page image thumbnails. Enable the admin UI by declaring support
  in your theme: add_theme_support(‘post-thumbnails’);
• Trash, with undo functionality, for posts, pages, comments
• Comment Meta table and functions — like Custom Fields/postmeta but
  for comments
• Easy media embeds, oEmbed — paste a URL on its own item and have it
  turn into embed code
• register_theme_directory() which enables plugins to bundle their own
  themes, without copying (BuddyPress, primary example)
• Combo upgrader — get notified of plugin updates in the WP core
  upgrader, as well as being informed of crowd-sourced compatibility
  information for the plugins.

It’s bug-fixing and polishing time! Our priorities should be, in this order:

1. Fixing regressions in old features/behaviors
2. Squashing bugs in the new features
3. Polish

Additionally, today WPMU has caught up and released 2.8.6. From the website:

This is a security release with the same fixes as WordPress 2.8.6 plus quite a few MU specific bug fixes too.