They have restarted the beta testing phase to account for the need for hosting providers to test different collaboration options.

WordPress now has a core dev environment toolkit. It is a desktop app available on Mac, Windows, or Linux and comes with everything needed to work on core. Details and some video demos on the make blog.

Joost makes the points that leadership is jumping around following trends while letting the technical debt pile up. WordPress doesn’t have an architect. EmDash isn’t the be all, end all, or the next thing, but that it is a signal.

The delay seems to be due to the real time collaboration issue and concerns about the database design. Real time collaboration will be off by default, but there is apparently no knowledge about how well it will work on shared hosting. Also mentioned that WordPress may go to 4 releases per year.

This article provides an overview of all of the new features coming to WordPress 7.0 in a couple of weeks. It is a pretty impressive list. Looking at the article’s table of contents is a good way to get a quick overview.

WordPress 7.0, set for release April 9th, is introducing block API version 3 which loads the editor in an iframe. This may cause issues with blocks that use the older API and haven’t been updated. In this article you can learn what the Meta Box team has done to be ready.

I’m happy to see them being proactive. I wonder if we will see issues with many third party block collections with the 7.0 release?

The overall release schedule is not changed, but the RC is delayed due to concerns with performance and other issues.

A Twenty Twenty-Seven core theme is under way. Planned for release in early December.

WordPress 7.0 Beta 5 has a new feature – a new Command Palette shortcut in the Omnibar. Also, as far as I recall, this the the first time the term “Omnibar” has been used.