WordPress.org has announced the release of WordPress 3.9, a significant update which brings a host of worthwhile improvements.

Uploading your images is now as easy as dragging and dropping them into the editor. Once there, quicker access to crop and rotation tools, as well as the ability to resize them “in place”, makes for a smoother editing experience.

Adding a gallery now displays a preview grid of images within the editor, for a much better idea of how your post will look.

Drag and drop image support and new gallery previews make for much easier editing

Simple audio and video playlists help you to organise and showcase your media clips.

The more-like WYSIWYG approach continues in the theme customiser, where you can reorganise your site’s widgets and get a live preview of the results.

But if that’s still too much hassle, an integrated theme browser makes it easier to find a suitable design. (Or “lose yourself in the boundless supply of free WordPress.org themes”, as the official 3.9 announcement puts it.)

As usual, there are plenty of less obvious enhancements elsewhere. These range from the “update” message being restored to the dashboard, to the ability to output galleries as HTML5. The change log has more, or you can just download WordPress 3.9 and explore the latest goodies for yourself.