New in Version 2.9: Full Screen Editing and Text Formatting

New in Version 2.9: Full Screen Editing and Text Formatting

The new post editor

We’re excited to give you the next major version of WordPress for iOS. The focus of this release is to further improve stability and add a few long-awaited new features.

What’s new?

• A Feature-Rich Content Editor. Now you can easily format text, make bulleted lists, create links, and do all kinds of other fancy stuff. (It’s about time, right?) Read more
• Full Screen Editing. No more teeny-weeny content editor — now you can view more text at a time while you post on the go. Read more
• Reading Made Easy. Keeping track of your favorite blogs has never been easier. Browse all the latest posts on blogs you follow in one place, right from your iPhone. Read more (no pun intended!)

Updated features

• Quick Photo will now use the post format for images (if your theme supports it).
• You can now post pictures that you’ve already taken with Quick Photo.
• Your stats referrer links and comment links can now be opened right from this app.

Version 2.9 also includes numerous other bug fixes and improvements not listed here. For a full list, visit the 2.9 Trac milestone.

A Feature-Rich Content Editor

Having the ability to easily style text, • create • lists, and add links has been requested since version 1.0 of WordPress for iOS. While you could type the tags manually, and use the elusive “Link Helper” feature to create links, it was not optimal.
In 2.9, a format bar is added on top of your regular keyboard that mimics the look and feel of the keys you’ve become so familiar with. Select some text, press a formatting button, and bam! The text is wrapped with the proper tags. If you don’t select any text, both the opening and end tag will be output and the cursor placed in the middle. Easy-peasy!
The format bar is enabled for both the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, and adjusted to the respective keyboards and device rotation. Try turning your iPhone to landscape mode when editing a post! The bar will shrink in size to give you more space to write on.

Full Screen Editing

Your phone has a relatively small screen. When writing a blog post, a large portion of it is taken up by the keyboard itself. While you’re not likely to write an 8,000 word post on your phone, wouldn’t it be great to get just a little more space? In 2.9, the top navigation is hidden, giving you more space to write on. This is particularly useful in landscape mode, where space is even more limited.
When the post is ready to go, just press Done on the format bar and you’ll be right back in the Post editor.

Reading Made Easy

Follow your favorite blogs on the go!

If you have one or more WordPress.com blogs in your WordPress for iOS app you’ll now see a Read button in the blogs list. This is the fastest way to keep up with posts from blogs you’re following on WordPress.com. Here’s how it works: if you go to any WordPress.com blog and click the Follow button, you’ll not only get email notifications about new posts from that blog, they’ll also show up right in the app!
You can manage the blogs you’re following in your WordPress.com dashboard, where you can even add external RSS feeds.
Don’t follow many blogs yet? In the app’s “Read” screen you’ll also find Freshly Pressed, listing the some of the most interesting posts from around the WordPress.com network. Or you can tap the little arrow button and select from a multitude of interesting topics, such as Art, Technology, Books, and many more.
This Read function is in Beta and will be improved over time, so we’d very much like to hear what you like about it and what you’d want to see next! Post a comment below or reach out to us on Twitter.

What’s next?

While we’re very proud of this release, we’re not resting! We’re currently in the planning stages of WordPress for iOS 3.0 which is going to be the biggest update to the WordPress for iOS app since its birth. The plan is to take an overall look at where the app is, and streamline it for what you use it for the most.
A more imminent update is coming shortly, with updated strings for numerous languages. If you’d like to help us translate the WordPress for iOS app into your native language, check out the translation project.