WordPress 3.3 debuts, featuring new toolbar, menus

Newest version of WordPress named 'Sonny' after jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt

Wordpress announced Monday the launch of WordPress 3.3, the latest iteration of their blogging platform, which includes some new and improved user interface features and a shiny new drag-and-drop image uploader.

Other WordPress 3.3 features include a new toolbar, menus that allow users to hover the cursor over them from navigation help, and a Tumblr importer. Wordpress 3.3, or "Sonny," named after jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt, is available right now.

That all sounds good, but as anyone who has ever used WordPress knows, user interface updates can often be more trouble than they're worth. What would be really nice is a WordPress that always works the first time, bug-free, without any of the formatting problems that have plagued past versions.

WordPress has logged over 65 million downloads since launching its 3.0 version, and 14 million since the launch of WordPress 3.2 in July 2011. And while the blogging platform has always been popular, the launch of 3.2, or "Gershwin," named after jazz songwriter/pianist George Gershwin, was wildly so. Over 330, 000 downloads of "Gershwin" occurred within the first 24 hours.

Developers believed that the renewed interest in the "Gershwin" version was due to the less cluttered interface, and the improved viewing mode, where the dashboard disappears into the background during composition, something the developers reportedly referred to as "zen mode." Also, the interface became more accessible on smaller screens, for mobile use.

But while this may be true, as I said before, it also assumes that users compose posts within the platform itself. Some users, namely myself, more often cut and paste text from other word processing software suites, and experience myriad formatting problems in the process, even when following the formatting guidelines in so-called "zen mode."

Not to rain on WordPress's shiny-new-update parade, but even a much less zen-y iteration that solved these formatting issues would make for fewer blogger headaches. And we all know that blogging is a headache-prone pursuit, even without the formatting issues.

Started in 2003, WordPress powers 22% of all new active websites, as of August 2011.