I just finished installing what’s aiming to be the final release candidate for WordPress 2.0. I’ve been waiting a long time for this update to come out and after quickly playing around with it I can say that installation was no more troublesome that previous updates. A few minutes of uploading and about 3 seconds upgrading. Everything seems to be working and already I’m seeing a lot of cool shit I like.

The whole revamp of the post writing GUI is definitely the most advanced and just plain fucking cool shit I’ve seen in any blog software. The collapsing menus help keep things from getting cluttered while the GUI that handles the actual formatting and input has been simplified to echo any rich text editor. If you’ve sent and html email or used an MS Word-like editor, you’ll find yourself in familiar territory. Instead of squinting at your posts, trying to read a paragraph, all broken apart by links and image urls, the post input box now displays
One of my more favorite improvements is the addition of a post preview using the actual CSS formatting from your live site so as you write your post, you can see it as it would appear on your site live. Instead of squinting at the post text box, parsing slowly through links and image urls as you try to write your post, images now appear directly in the draft as you type it and links are simply highlights blue and underlined. It’s perfect. Everything’s all drag and drop, it’s mind-blowing. I immediately had to start this post to test it out.
I’ve encountered very few issues. most I am sure are there due to the fact that I still need to go over the changelog and browse the documentation. However, my favorite FireFox spell-checking plugin, ASpellFox will only perform if I turn off the rich editing in the post. It’s not a big deal, though. It still works. Of actual WordPress plugins, I notice that only two so far that are not working well and need to be disabled until a future version update. Any disappointment over quirks or learning curves are smothered by sheer coolness. This is a good update.