WordPress 2.8 Is Ready For Immediate Download

the latest and greatest version of WordPress, version 2.8 “Baker,” is immediately available for download. 2.8 represents a nice fit and finish release for WordPress with improvements to themes, widgets, taxonomies, and overall speed. They also fixed over 790 bugs. This release is named in honor of noted trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker. Here’s a quick video overview of everything in the new release:

Major New Improvements

First and foremost, 2.8 is way faster to use. They have  changed the way WordPress does style and scripting.

If you were ever frustrated with widgets before, this release should be your savior. They have  completely redesigned the widgets interface (which we didn’t have time to in 2.7) to allow you to do things like edit widgets on the fly, have multiple copies of the same widget, drag and drop widgets between sidebars, and save inactive widgets so you don’t lose all their settings.

Finally you should explore the new Screen Options on every page. It’s the tab in the top right. Now, for example, if you have a wide monitor you could set up your dashboard to have four columns of widgets instead of the two it has by default. On other pages you can change how many items show per page.