Meet WordPress 5.7 “Esperanza”
Jazz up your stories in an editor that’s cleaner, crisper, and does more to get out of your way.
Yesterday Matt Mullenweg announced the release of WordPress version 5.7.
With this new version, WordPress brings you fresh colors. The editor helps you work in a few places you couldn’t before—at least, not without getting into code or hiring a pro. The controls you use most, like changing font sizes, are in more places—right where you need them. And layout changes that should be simple, like full-height images, are even simpler to make.
According to WordPress, the version 5.7 release of WordPress is called “Esperanza” and is the first WordPress release of 2021. “Esperanza” is named in honor of Esperanza Spalding, a modern musical prodigy. Her path as a musician is varied and inspiring—learn more about her and give her music a listen!
Approximately 40% of the web uses WordPress. Crazy stuff!
Now the editor is easier to use
Font-size adjustment in more places: now, font-size controls are right where you need them in the List and Code blocks. No more trekking to another screen to make that single change!
Reusable blocks: several enhancements make reusable blocks more stable and easier to use. And now they save automatically with the post when you click the Update button.
Inserter drag-and-drop: You can drag blocks and block patterns from the inserter right into your post.
You can do more without writing custom code
Full-height alignment: have you ever wanted to make a block, like the Cover block, fill the whole window? Now you can.
Buttons block: now, you can choose a vertical or a horizontal layout. And you can set the width of a button to a preset percentage.
Social Icons block: now, you can change the size of the icons.
A Simpler Default Color Palette
This new streamlined color palette collapses all the colors used to be in the WordPress source code down to seven core colors, and a range of 56 shades that meet the WCAG 2.0 AA recommended contrast ratio against white or black.
The colors are perceptually uniform from light to dark in each range, which means they start at white and get darker by the same amount with each step.
Half the range has a 4.5 or higher contrast ratio against black, and the other half maintains the same contrast against white.
Check out the new palette in the default WordPress Dashboard color scheme, and use it when you’re building themes, plugins, or any other components. For all the details, check out the Color Palette dev note.
From HTTP to HTTPS in a single click
Starting now, switching a site from HTTP to HTTPS is a one-click move. WordPress will automatically update database URLs when you make the switch. No more hunting and guessing!
New Robots API
The new Robots API lets you include the filter directives in the robots metatag, and the API consists of the max-image-preview: large command by default. That means search engines can show bigger image previews, which can boost your traffic (unless the site is marked not-public).
Ongoing cleanup after update to jQuery 3.5.1
For years jQuery helped make things move on the screen in ways the essential tools couldn't—but that keeps changing, and so does jQuery.
In 5.7, jQuery gets more focused and less intrusive, with fewer messages in the console.
Lazy-load your iframes
Now it's simple to let iframes lazy-load. By default, WordPress will add a loading= "lazy" attribute to iframe tags when both width and height are specified.
Check the Field Guide for more!
Check out the latest version of the WordPress Field Guide. It highlights developer notes for each change are available in the WordPress 5.7 Field Guide.