WordPress 2.6 has been released, and the new feature list seems impressive.

Here is a quick list of the features that have been added to the new version of WordPress:

• Versioning control - you can now track and compare changes when editing an existing post
• Press This! - you can add a bookmark to your browser’s toolbar, which will automatically start a post with the content of whatever page you’re viewing when you press the bookmark. For instance, if you visit YouTube, you can use the Press This! button to automatically post the video you’re viewing on your blog
• Gears - I’m honestly not sure what this does, but it appears to be some sort of plugin for your browser, completely independent of WordPress, that allows you to cache common CSS and JS files while you’re browsing the Web
• Theme previews - you can now test drive a theme while you are developing it, rather than having to make it active to see what it really looks like
• Word count
• Image captions
• …much more

Here’s a short video detailing some of the updates. A higher res version is available in the official WordPress blog:

If you are using WordPress (like we are here at HTMLCenter and I am on one of my personal sites), it seems like it’s really worth it to run out and pick up the new version. If you’re not a WordPress user, now might be a good time to become one.

Let us know what you think of it once you get it configured.

Although it slipped under the radar with everyone getting ramped up for the release of Firefox 3; the folks at Opera released a new version of their browser a few weeks ago. On June 12, Opera 9.5 was released, and apparently includes quite a few updates.

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On Thursday, June 19, OpenSuSE 11.0 was officially released by Novell. The newest version of OpenSuSE includes many new software packages on the installation DVD. Some of the new packages include Firefox 3.0, KDE 4.0, Compiz Fusion (apparently a 3-D display module - pictured at right) and a newer media player called Banshee 1.0.

All-in-all, the new release from the OpenSuSE community includes over 200 new features that are only available in OpenSuSE.

Having been a SuSE user for a little more than three years, I cannot recommend this download highly enough. When I first installed SuSE, I was very weary of using Linux, as I had heard everyone talk about how difficult Linux was to use if you weren’t a complete computer geek. SuSE was a different experience altogether, however. The desktop is extremely intuitive and the entire OS is very easy to use. It took very little effort to understand how to configure and use SuSE, and I very quickly came to love it.

If you are curious at all about Linux, you should definitely download the new live CD from the OpenSusE download site. A live CD is a disc that contains the entire base operating system on a single disc. Live discs do not require you to install anything on your computer. Rather, the entire operating system runs directly from the disc. Of course, with a live disc, you don’t have nearly as many configuration options and you can’t really store your files effectively. However, the newer live discs from SuSE have even included a one-click install option right on the desktop, should you ever decide you want to install the system on your computer.