Another programmer's text editor has been added to the
Free Programmer's Editors and ASCII Text Editors
page. This one is primarily a C++ integrated development environment (IDE). That is, it is mainly for programmers using
the C++ programming language and includes
many features intended to make that task easier. Incidentally, if you are looking for a web editor so that you can
create your own website,
you may find the Free HTML Editors and
WYSIWYG Web Editors page more relevant.
WordPress 3.0.2 is available and is a mandatory security update for all previous WordPress versions. Haiku has become traditional:
Fixed on day zero
One-click update makes you safe
This used to be hard
This maintenance release fixes a moderate security issue that could allow a malicious Author-level user to gain further access to the site, addresses a handful of bugs, and provides some additional security enhancements. Big thanks to Vladimir Kolesnikov for detailed and responsible disclosure of the security issue!
Download 3.0.2 or update automatically from the Dashboard > Updates menu in your site’s admin area. You should update immediately even if you do not have untrusted users.
It’s that time in the release cycle again, when all the features are basically done, and we’re just squashing bugs. To the brave of heart and giving of soul: Won’t you help us test the new version of WordPress? As always, this is software still in development and we don’t recommend that you run it on your normal live site — set up a test site just to play with the new version. If you break it (find a bug), report it, and if you’re a developer, try to help us fix it. (Especially you U.S. types who are taking a long weekend for Thanksgiving! 
)
If all goes well, we hope to release WordPress 3.1 to the world at large by the end of the year, though that is (as always) subject to change/dependent on how the beta period goes. The more help we get with testing and fixing bugs, the sooner we will be able to release the final version.
If you want to be a beta tester, you should check out the Codex article on how to report bugs. Some of the new features to check out include:
There are also some known issues: things that aren’t *quite* finished, but that weren’t worth holding up the beta release. They will be fixed before 3.1 is released for general use. Note that as things get fixed, the beta release will update nightly. What you should know:
- Fatal error: Call to a member function is_page() on a non-object in /wp-includes/query.php. is_page() may be any conditional tag. This issue occurs when a theme or plugin is doing something wrong. Some code is checking the value of a conditional tag before we actually set up the Query, which means they don’t work yet. In 3.0, they silently failed and always returned false. In 3.1 Beta 1, this is throwing a fatal error. This will be handled in the final release, so use this opportunity to fix your plugins. (#14729)
- All known issues slated for fixing before launch are listed in Trac. Please check this list to see if a bug is already on the list before reporting it.
Remember, if you find something you think is a bug, report it! You can bring it up in the alpha/beta forum, you can email it to the wp-testers list, or if you’ve confirmed that other people are experiencing the same bug, you can report it on the WordPress Core Trac. (I recommend starting in the forum or on the mailing list.)
Theme and plugin authors, if you haven’t been following the 3.1, please start now so that you can update your themes and plugins to be compatible with the newest version of WordPress.
Note to developers: WordPress is built by the contributions of hundreds of developers. If you’d like to see this release come out on time, I encourage you to pitch in. Even if you don’t have time to do testing on the beta version, you could help us by contributing a fix for one of the many bugs we already know about.
To those of you in the U.S., have a lovely long holiday weekend, and if you’re looking for something to occupy your post-turkey hours, we hope you’ll take the beta for a spin!
Download WordPress 3.1 Beta 1
This post will be short and to the point: Dan Roundhill announced that a new version of WordPress for Android has been released, fixing numerous bugs and adding the ability to set post status from within the app. Version 1.3.8 hit the Android Market today. For more details, check out the post on the WordPress for Android blog.
Run your own mail server to process your email, complete with spam protection, virus scanning, etc, with these
free email server software.
They can be particularly handy if you send out a lot of email, such as you might if you have
your own mailing list, and
prefer to have your software process it directly instead of going through your ISP.
If you want a lightweight program to view PDF files, and are tired of the slugglish Adobe Reader that seems to be such a huge
target for malware nowadays, check out this newest entry on the
Free PDF Readers / Viewers page.
The program is free (and open source too), and works on Windows and Linux. Don't like it? Try one of the other free PDF viewers
listed on the page, some of which work on Mac OS X too.
I was just informed that WordPress, in head-to-head voting against Joomla and Drupal, has won this year’s Open Source CMS Hall of Fame award.
We have to be careful because if this trend continues people might think WordPress is a real CMS, useful for more than just a blog. This would ruin our stealth campaign and might bring dozens of new users to the WordPress community. If you could keep this on the DL we’d appreciate it.
We don’t want WordPress to develop a reputation.
Are you looking for a way to create your own photo gallery, and want to do it for free, the easy way? Check out the latest
entry on the Free Online Photo-Sharing
and Photo Album Services or Web Hosts page. This service lets you upload as many pictures (and videos) as you like. If you have
your
own website or blog, you can even embed (hotlink) those pictures on your site. If you don't, just use the photo landing pages they
automatically create for you.
Are you writing documentation for your computer software and wish you could generate a Windows help file, a PDF file,
a Word document and a website from a single document source? Now you can, with this latest addition to the
Free Help Authoring Tools page.
Do you have 2 or more computers (or external USB drives, etc) where you store identical documents, photos and other data? Manually
keeping the copies of your files up-to-date on both devices can be an error-prone task, let alone a bit of a hassle. The free computer programs
listed on this new Free File Synchronization Software
page will automatically scan and synchronize your files so that all your devices have the latest updated versions.