I had the chance today to take a look into Thesis 1.8 beta1 which is available for developers, this is somehow helpful for me while working with Thesis Skins, so I am trying in this to compare Thesis 1.8 features with Thesis 1.7 version as there are a few major and minor changes and differences between both releases. I can not hide that I a little disappointed with it, I expected more useful features to be included in this release, but it seems there aren’t too much for me this time.
So.. generally I am still waiting for Thesis 2.0 and the big hit as I expect it should be really awesome version of Thesis Theme.
Thesis Site Options
I can see some changes here, the Home Page SEO is placed on Thesis Site Options page now, and there is a new feature called Publisher Tools, it allows you to enable support for Windows Live Writer, I don’t use it so it doesn’t make any difference to me at the mean time, maybe for someone else this feature will be more useful, and maybe we will see more publishing tools added in the future.
The Navigation Menu feature, this is the fix that we was needed to allow Thesis Themes to work with WordPress 3.0 navigation menu, so.. now with Thesis 1.8 you can switch between both navigation systems.
Another add that I can notice is the Custom Stylesheet Options which seems to give the blog more load speed in case you aren’t using custom stylesheet.
Thesis Design Options
I can not see changes in this area that catches my eyes so far!
Thesis Header Image
I think this was added because so many people requested an easy way to change their blog headers and maybe include a logo design on it, this feature also will not benefit me at all, but maybe it’s useful for others!
I just don’t agree about what it says here, the image has an optimal width of 730 pixels, and if it’s wider than that then Thesis will automatically crop it, I don’t think that this is the right way to do it, I mean it would be better if the image was free of size, then the blog owner “should” upload the right sizes to match his blog width, cropping images is not a good idea for me as it will end with hiding some part of the header image, or maybe someone will like to have more design elements to show on the header like we do here, and that’s why I feel that I will never ever use this feature, and I prefer to setup header images manually!
So, let’s say this could be the best part for someone, but not me!
Thesis Page Options is no longer exists!
Thesis Page Option of thesis 1.7 is not something good to deal with if you have so many tags on your blog, and probably removing this page is the best part I really see in Thesis 1.8.
I was having a bad feeling about the Thesis Page Options in Thesis 1.7, especially the Tag Page Options features where you can edit each of your tag pages SEO stuff. I never wanted to deal with it because I have a lot of tags which freezes my browser some times when I open it to change something in a hurry, so.. each time I had to wait for the very long page to load and then scroll down to the infinity to find what I am looking for which makes me dizzy!!
I can see that what’s left from Thesis Page Options page is only the Home Page SEO which moved to Thesis Site Options page as I mentioned above.
Thesis Options Manager
I can see some minor changes here on Thesis Options Manager page, it’s just about the order of options, but I think the new order is more handy and it help on avoiding mistakes while working with this sensitive area. Here is how it looks in Thesis 1.7
And, here is how it looks in the new Thesis 1.8
What Chris Pearson says about it 2 weeks back!
In Thesis Theme support forum, Chris Pearson said two weeks back that the next release of Thesis Theme – I believe he was talking about Thesis 1.8- will have the following feature and updates:
This can be found ot this thread in the Thesis Theme forum.
Final thought!
Ok guys, that’s all what I found on the new Thesis 1.8, well.. the work with Thesis Themes sill going on, this is only Thesis 1.8 beta1, some nice stuff.. some unnecessary changes, maybe useful for some bloggers, maybe not useful at all for others.
Some people say they can not wait to get Thesis 1.8, I say this time you actually can wait, it doesn’t makes a that huge difference to me so far! but what to do?! I still develop Thesis Skins for Thesis, and I love Thesis Themes 😉