It’s the most wonderful time of the year: a new WordPress release is available and chock-full of goodies to delight bloggers and developers alike. We’re calling this one “Elvin” in honor of drummer Elvin Jones, who played with John Coltrane in addition to many others.

If you’ve been around WordPress a while, the most dramatic new change you’ll notice is a completely re-imagined flow for uploading photos and creating galleries. Media has long been a friction point and we’ve listened hard and given a lot of thought into crafting this new system. 3.5 includes a new default theme, Twenty Twelve, which has a very clean mobile-first responsive design and works fantastic as a base for a CMS site. Finally we’ve spent a lot of time refreshing the styles of the dashboard, updating everything to be Retina-ready with beautiful high resolution graphics, a new color picker, and streamlining a couple of fewer-used sections of the admin.

Here’s a quick video overview of everything you can share with your friends:

For Developers

You can now put your (or anyone’s) WordPress.org username on the plugins page and see your favorite tagged ones, to make it easy to install them again when setting up a new site. There’s a new Tumblr importer. New installs no longer show the links manager. Finally for multisite developers switch_to_blog() is way faster and you can now install MS in a sub-directory. The Underscore and Backbone JavaScript libraries are now available. The Codex has a pretty good summary of the developer features above and beyond this, and you can always grab a warm beverage and explore Trac directly.

Percussion Section

Behind every great release is great contributors. 3.5 had more people involved than any release before it:

Aaron D. Campbell, aaronholbrook, Aaron Jorbin, Adam Harley, akbortoli, alecrust, Alex Concha, Alex King, Alex Mills (Viper007Bond), alexvorn2, ampt, Amy Hendrix (sabreuse), andrea.r, Andrew Nacin, Andrew Ozz, Andrew Ryno, Andrew Spittle, Andy Skelton, apokalyptik, Bainternet, Barry Kooij, bazza, bbrooks, Ben Casey, Ben Huson, Ben Kulbertis, bergius, Bernhard Riedl, betzster, Billy (bananastalktome), bolo1988, bradparbs, bradthomas127, Brady Vercher, Brandon Dove, Brian Layman, Brian Richards, Bronson Quick, Bryan Petty, cannona, Caroline Moore, Caspie, cdog, Charles Frees-Melvin, chellycat, Chelsea Otakan, Chouby, Chris Olbekson, Christopher Finke, Chris Wallace, Cor van Noorloos, Cristi Burcă, Dan, Dan Rivera, Daryl Koopersmith, Dave Martin, deltafactory, Dion Hulse, DjZoNe, dllh, Dominik Schilling, doublesharp, Drew Jaynes (DrewAPicture), Drew Strojny, Eddie Moya, elyobo, Emil Uzelac, Empireoflight, Eric Andrew Lewis, Erick Hitter, Eric Mann, ericwahlforss, Evan Solomon, fadingdust, F J Kaiser, foxinni, Gary Cao, Gary Jones, Gary Pendergast, GeertDD, George Mamadashvili, George Stephanis, GhostToast, gnarf, goldenapples, Gustavo Bordoni, hakre, hanni, hardy101, hebbet, Helen Hou-Sandi, Hugo Baeta, iamfriendly, Ian Stewart, ikailo, Ipstenu (Mika Epstein), itworx, j-idris, Jake Goldman, jakub.tyrcha, James Collins, jammitch, Jane Wells, Japh, JarretC, Jason Lemahieu (MadtownLems), javert03, jbrinley, jcakec, Jeff Bowen, Jeff Sebring, Jeremy Felt, Jeremy Herve, Jerry Bates (JerrySarcastic), Jesper Johansen (Jayjdk), jndetlefsen, Joe Hoyle, joelhardi, Joey Kudish, John Blackbourn (johnbillion), John James Jacoby, John P. Bloch, Jonas Bolinder, Jonathan D. Johnson, Jon Cave, joostdekeijzer, Jorge Bernal, Joseph Scott, Juan, Justin Sainton, Justin Sternberg, Justin Tadlock, Kailey Lampert (trepmal), Kelly Dwan, Keruspe, kitchin, Knut Sparhell, Konstantin Kovshenin, Konstantin Obenland, Kopepasah, Kristopher Lagraff, Kurt Payne, Kyrylo, Lance Willett, Larysa Mykhas, leogermani, lesteph, linuxologos, Luc De Brouwer, Luke Gedeon, Lutz Schroer, mailnew2ster, Manuel Schmalstieg, Maor Chasen, Marco, MarcusPope, Mark Jaquith, Marko Heijnen, MartyThornley, mattdanner, Matthew Richmond, Matt Martz, Matt Thomas, Matt Wiebe, mattyrob, Max Cutler, Mel Choyce, Mert Yazicioglu, Michael Adams (mdawaffe), Michael Fields, Mike Bijon, Mike Glendinning, Mike Hansen, Mike Little, Mike Schinkel, Mike Schroder, Mike Toppa, Milan Dinic, mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine), Mohammad Jangda, mohanjith, mpvanwinkle77, Mr Papa, murky, Naoko Takano, Nashwan Doaqan, Niall Kennedy, Nikolay Bachiyski, ntm, nvartolomei, pavelevap, pdclark, Pete Mall, Peter Westwood, Pete Schuster, Philip Arthur Moore, Phill Brown, picklepete, Picklewagon, Prasath Nadarajah, r-a-y, Rami Yushuvaev, Ricardo Moraleida, Robert Chapin (miqrogroove), Robert Wetzlmayr, Ron Rennick, rstern, Ryan Boren, Ryan Imel, Ryan Koehler, Ryan Markel, Ryan McCue, Safirul Alredha, Samir Shah, Sam Margulies, Samuel Wood (Otto), sara cannon, Satish Gandham, scott.gonzalez, Scott Kingsley Clark, Scott Reilly, Scott Taylor, ScreenfeedFr, sergey.s.betke, Sergey Biryukov, Simon Prosser, Simon Wheatley, sirzooro, ssamture, sterlo, sumindmitriy, sushkov, swekitsune, Takashi Irie, Taylor Dewey, Taylor Lovett, Terry Sutton, Thomas Griffin, Thorsten Ott, timbeks, timfs, Tim Moore, TobiasBg, TomasM, Tom Auger, tommcfarlin, Tom Willmot, toscho, Travis Smith, Vasken Hauri, Vinicius Massuchetto, Vitor Carvalho, Waclaw, WaldoJaquith, Wojtek Szkutnik, Xavier Borderie, Yoav Farhi, Yogi T, Zack Tollman, and ZaMoose.

The third release candidate for WordPress 3.5 is now available. We’ve made a number of changes over the last week since RC2 that we can’t wait to get into your hands. Hope you’re ready to do some testing!

• Final UI improvements for the new media manager, based on lots of great feedback.
• Show more information about uploading errors when they occur.
• When inserting an image into a post, don’t forget the alternative text.
• Fixes for the new admin button styles.
• Improvements for mobile devices, Internet Explorer, and right-to-left languages.
• Fix cookies for subdomain installs when multisite is installed in a subdirectory.
• Fix ms-files.php rewriting for very old multisite installs.

At this point, we only have a few minor issues left. If all goes well, you will see WordPress 3.5 very soon. If you run into any issues, please post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums.

If you’d like to know what to test, visit the About page ( → About in the toolbar) and check out the list of features. This is still development software, so your boss may get mad if you install this on a live site. To test WordPress 3.5, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”). Or you can download the release candidate here (zip).