WordPress Version 3.8 Released on 12 December 2013

On December 12, 2013, WordPress Version 3.8, named for Charlie Parker, was released to the public. For more information on this enhancement and bug-fix release, read the WordPress Blog, the Release Post, and see the Changelog for 3.8.

For Version 3.8, the database version (db_version in wp_options) changed to 26691, and the Trac revision was r26861.

Highlights

• Introduces a new, modern admin design
  • A fresh, uncluttered design
  • Clean typography with Open Sans
  • Superior contrast and large, comfortable type
  • Responsive interfaces throughout
  • Refined, theme management
  • Smoother, click-to-add widget management

• New Default Theme – Twenty Fourteen
  • Easily create a responsive magazine website with a sleek, modern design.
  • Feature your favorite homepage content in either a grid or a slider.
  • Use the three widget areas to customize your website, and change your content’s layout with a full-width page template and a contributor page to show off your authors.

• For Developers
  • External Libraries have been updated.
  • Better RTL support
  • Theme screenshots’ size have increased from 600 × 450 to 880 × 660.

What’s New

General

• Replace PNG-based plugins ratings stars with Dashicons for performance gains
• Improved help tab text in various screens
• Clicking “Check Again” on the Updates screen now provides more immediate feedback

Dashboard

• Consolidate several Dashboard widgets to improve readability
• Replace the ‘Right Now’ widget with the new and improved ‘At a Glance’ widget

Appearance

• Introduce 8 new admin color schemes
• Improved readability throughout using Open Sans typeface (where supported)
• Responsive Toolbar for smaller-screen devices
• Leverage Dashicons instead of icon sprites for crisper experience on all resolutions
• Big RTL improvements throughout
• Make the dashboard more usable on any size device with responsive all the things
• Improve the login screen experience for Internet Explorer 8 users
• Improve Quick Edit experience for non-English users
• Improve the Menus experience for mobile users

Themes

• New Default Theme — Twenty Fourteen
• Make it possible to check for any post format assigned to a post with has_post_format()
• Better custom background theme support defaults, can now specify ‘default-repeat’, ‘default-position-x’, and ‘default-attachment’ arguments for background images.
• Tags for width changed to layout: responsive-layout, fluid-layout, and fixed-layout
• New tag: accessibility-ready to denote a theme is aware of accessibility best practices such as color contrast, keyboard navigation, and form/link focus. See WP theme accessibility guidelines.

Widgets

• New click-to-add interface for adding widgets to sidebars
• Improved interface for devices of all resolutions
• Better drag-and-drop experience

Accessibility

• Make list table row actions keyboard accessible
• Improve color contrast throughout the admin

Multisite

• Improved performance when deleting users in Multisite

Under The Hood

General

• Heartbeat performance and API improvements
• A $taxonomy argument was added to each of the adjacent post functions.
• Define $is_nginx in vars.php
• Apply capital_P_dangit() to the wp_title filter
• Make sure ajaxurl is defined in the Customizer
• validate_active_plugins() now checks the manage_network_plugins capability instead of is_super_admin()
• Add a show_metabox parameter to register_taxonomy()
• Make it easier to target video shortcodes by adding a wp-video class to the parent container
• Add CSSMin, SASS, CSSJanus, and jsHint to build tools for core development

Bug Fixes

• Fix bug where top-level categories were only redirecting if they had no children
• Fix bug in wp_get_object_terms() where returned were strings not integers
• Fix a bug where passing a null value to meta_query resulted in wonkiness with the comparison operator
• Fix “‘wp_signups’ already exists for query” error after updating a Multisite network
• Fix bug in get_bookmarks() caused by missing parentheses
• Fix comment_notification_recipients filter behavior so that it is still respected even on comments left by the post author
• Fix a date comparison error in dashboard_relative_date()
• Fix keyboard accessibility for row actions in list tables.
• Fix no-js and accessibility modes in in the Widgets screen
• Fix a bug where menus could still be assigned to a non-existent theme location
• Silence jQuery Migrate errors in the General settings page

Multisite

Classes

• Introduce WP_Screen::remove_option()
• Introduce WP_Screen::remove_options()
• Introduce WP_Screen::get_options()

Functions

• Introduce wp_dashboard_quick_press()
• Introduce wp_dashboard_site_activity()
• Introduce wp_dashboard_recent_posts()
• Introduce wp_dashboard_recent_comments()
• Introduce wp_dashboard_primary_output()
• Introduce wp_heartbeat_set_suspension()
• Introduce wp_star_rating()
• Introduce get_theme_update_available()
• Introduce wp_prepare_themes_for_js()

Actions & Filters

Actions

• Introduce automatic_updates_complete

Filters

• Introduce automatic_updates_debug_email
• Introduce wp_prepare_themes_for_js

External Libraries

• Add a copyright notice to zxcvbn (password strength meter) script

Deprecated

• screen_icon()
• get_screen_icon()
• wp_dashboard_incoming_links_output()
• wp_dashboard_secondary_output()
• wp_dashboard_incoming_links()
• wp_dashboard_incoming_links_control()
• wp_dashboard_plugins()
• wp_dashboard_primary_control()
• wp_dashboard_recent_comments_control()
• wp_dashboard_secondary()
• wp_dashboard_secondary_control()
• no_update_actions()

Miscellaneous

• Many unused images were removed from core. See the full list