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Self-hosted WordPress users, get your update engines running: WordPress 3.3 is now available.
The culmination of five months of hard work, WordPress 3.3 offers a number of new updates and tweaked features.
The first of these is a redesigned dashboard, which features menus and toolbars that are more cohesive and easier to maneuver on smaller screens.

WordPress 3.3 has also added call-outs and pointers for new users, as well as better contextual help. The media manager, a long-standing point of pain for the CMS, has received an upgrade and now supports drag-and-drop file uploading. Let’s hope a more robust management and search system appears in future releases.
As WordPress matures, releases become less about breakout features, and more about refining what already works and improving the backend for developers.
On the developer side, there is a new editor API for better integration with the core WordPress post and page editor, as well as updated versions of jQuery and jQuery UI.
I’ve already updated most of my personal sites to WordPress 3.3 and enjoy the new admin toolbar and the layout of the side navigation menus. Let us know your thoughts of WordPress 3.3 in the comments.
1. Redesigned Admin Bar
The redesigned admin bar brings a handful of strategic enhancements.
There are less links/elements shown, and the ones that remain are carefully placed for a reason. The search box and appearance menu were removed, and the user menu moved to the right side, similar to Google’s user bar.
By making it a shade darker and bolder, the admin bar is now more prominent in the WordPress back-end.
Click here to view this gallery.
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