As many of you know, we periodically release new features and updates to the software that powers WordPress.com sites. We’re excited to share the freshest crop of improvements with you today, and hope they’ll make great content even easier to create.

Some of the highlights of this major update:

  • The Media Library’s look has been upgraded, and your files are now displayed, by default, in an easy-to-view grid. Still prefer the old list view? You can toggle back and forth as many times as you wish.
  • Composing new posts — and editing old ones — has just become a lot easier with a fixed toolbar. You no longer need to scroll up and down the Post Editor to make changes, which makes longform writing, in particular, especially smoother.
  • Improved audio playlists let you enter artist and album information, which will be displayed in the audio player in the published post.

A sleeker Media Library

Many bloggers constantly visit their Media Library to choose files to use in their newest post. With this update, we made browsing through and selecting media smoother and quicker with a new grid view. Another cool touch? When you use the search box to look up files, irrelevant results will be eliminated as you type.

New Media Library

Of course, if you prefer the older list view, have no fear: you can always switch back with the toggle at the top-left corner of the Media Library.

A streamlined editing experience

One small — but extremely helpful and time-saving — update we’ve introduced is a fixed toolbar to the Post Editor. Before, if you were writing a longer post and wanted to use any of the formatting tools, you’d have to scroll up the page to make the toolbar appear again. No more.

The toolbar is now pinned to the top of your post window, so whether you’re writing a haiku or a longform essay, it’s there to let you make all the changes you want in an instant.

And remember, if you want to get to the top of the page very quickly, all you have to do is click the admin toolbar at the top.

Better audio playlists

If you’ve uploaded audio files to your site (which requires the Space Upgrade), we have some good news. When you create a new playlist, you can now add the artist and album information.

Screen Shot 2014-07-16 at 4.31.43 PM

Once the post is published (or the draft saved) and the audio player is visible, that information will be available for your visitors, as in the example below:

Screen Shot 2014-07-16 at 4.32.18 PM

Is your site self-hosted?

The improvements we’re announcing today are part of the WordPress 4.0 release, which WordPress.com users test out first. These and other updates will become available to all self-hosted WordPress sites in coming weeks. Meanwhile, you can already help test the second beta.

We’re constantly tinkering behind the scenes and making updates to make your dashboard experience the best it can be. If you have feedback or questions, chime in on the Forums. For support questions, contact Support.