WordPress 5.8 “Tatum,” named in honor of jazz pianist Art Tatum, landed earlier today. It is the second major release in 2021. It includes

WordPress 5.8 “Tatum” Introduces Block Widgets, Duotone Media Filters, New Emoji Support, and More

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2021-07-22 01:00:09

WordPress 5.8 “Tatum,” named in honor of jazz pianist Art Tatum, landed earlier today. It is the second major release in 2021. It includes duotone media filters, block-based widgets, theme-related blocks, template editing, and theme JSON file support.

The release also ships tons of other notable features, such as support for new Emoji and an Update URI field for plugin authors to offer custom updates. The latest update also drops support for IE11, saying goodbye to the era of Internet Explorer.

Matt Mullenweg led the WordPress 5.8 release, which saw contributions from 530 volunteers. The entire release team closed 320 Trac tickets and over 1,500 GitHub pull requests.

The Image and Cover blocks received a new duotone feature. It is a filter that allows users to lay two colors over their media, creating unique effects. The colors overwrite the shadows and highlights of the image or video. Users can use WordPress’s defaults, theme-defined colors, or create their own mixes.

WordPress 5.8 also introduces several upgrades to the media library. The development team replaced infinite scrolling with a “load more” button, improving the experience for screen-reader and keyboard users. End-users can now copy media file URLs from the Add New media screen.