While most of the United States was barbequing and lighting fireworks, the WordPress team was hard at work getting the final release for 3.2 out the door. It’s not available for download. Of notable features, a full screen mode for writing posts, as well as a newly designed admin interface. As someone who’s been using WordPress since the 1.2 days, I’ve seen every evolution possible, and this one is growing on me. The “big” header is gone, which is the hardest part to get used to. Certainly frees up more room on the screen for actually doing stuff.

Another major note is the change in minimum requirements to run WordPress. Your server now needs to be running PHP 5.2 or greater, and MySQL 5.0 or higher. While making this change, some refactoring under the hood was done to make the admin lighter and faster.

I haven’t had the opportunity to fully explore these changes, but the cursory feedback I’m hearing, it was mission accomplished.

To read the full notes on the release, check the official WordPress 3.2 release announcement.