The last major version of WordPress ^[1]; WordPress 3.1 ^[2]  was released back in February and the team had already begun planning for  WordPress 3.2 ^[3] back in March.

It looks like most of those plans are now finally beginning to take shape with the release ^[4] of WordPress 3.2 Beta 1. WordPress 3.2 will contain several new changes including dropping support for older technologies like PHP4 and MySQL4 among other things. WordPress 3.2 requires PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0 to run.

In addition to that, WordPress 3.2 will also stop supporting Internet Explorer 6. Users browsing the site through IE6 will be shown a message to switch their browsers.

WordPress 3.2 also includes several performance improvements which make it faster than the earlier version. One more new addition that will be liked by users is the inclusion of Distraction-free Writing in the visual editor. Additionally, WordPress 3.2 includes a refresh to the Admin UI and a new default theme called Twenty Eleven. It will also include more links in the admin bar, however, you can always disable or hide the Admin bar in WordPress ^[5] if you don’t like it.

Overall the changes look pretty decent and should make the next generation of WordPress better than its predecessor. I will be doing a full review of WordPress 3.2 shortly, so stay tuned for it.

Here are some of the major changes that are included in WordPress 3.2:

• Performance improvements like you wouldn’t believe. What’s that mean? Things are faster!
• Distraction-free Writing. The visual editor’s full-screen composing experience has gotten a major overhaul, and is now available from HTML mode, too. More than ever, WordPress allows you to focus on what matters most — your content.
• Admin UI Refresh. The last major redesign of the WordPress admin was in 2008. This isn’t a major redesign, just a little facelift to keep us feeling young. WordPress turns 8 later this month, you know.
• New Default Theme. Introducing Twenty Eleven, based on the popular Duster theme. Rotating header images, post format support, and more.
• Browse Happy. WordPress is made to work with modern browsers. If you visit your Dashboard using an outdated web browser, we’ll let you know there’s a newer version available.
• Admin Bar. We’ve added more links to the admin bar to make it even more useful.
• WordPress has new minimum system requirements: PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0.
• Internet Explorer 6 will no longer be supported.
• The favorites menu has been removed. If you’ve written any plugins that use this menu, it’s time to switch over to an admin bar placement.

You can download WordPress 3.2 Beta 1 from here ^[6].