Bloggers rejoice: WordPress 3.6 has been released, sporting the name “Oscar” and including a number of major new features to excite users. The open-source CMS system gains new features for both users and developers, including built-in HTML5 media player and new audio/video API.

The new release is joined by a brand new theme – Twenty Thirteen – that provides a modern-art inspired, single-column layout that’s designed to work across mobile and desktop platforms. Sidebars and widgets have been moved into the footer, and it comes with support for Genericon font-based icons.

User improvements include Revamped Revisions, which now store every single change to a post, allowing users to scroll through changes via a timeline slider to easily revert back to a previous version if required.

Reviewing post revisions is much easier in WordPress 3.6.

The feature – accessed by clicking the new Revisions hyperlink under the save button – also lets users compare two different versions side-by-side, plus records which user made which revision.

Other multi-user improvements see a new pop-up dialog appear when one user attempts to edit a post currently being worked on by another. The user can leave the post alone, preview what changes have been made or take control of the post depending on their access levels.

Each author also gains their own autosave stream, which is stored locally as well as online, to reduce the risk of data further.

The new built-in HTML5 media player means video and audio can now be embedded natively into posts simply by copying and pasting the media’s URL, and media can be previewed on the Media Edit screen too.

One final improvement for users comes in the form of an improved Menu Editor, which WordPress says is “much easier to understand and use”.

Developers gain a new video/audio API that supports access to the media’s metadata, including ID3 tags. They can also opt for improved HTML5 markup for comment and search forms as well as comment lists. There are also better filters for how revisions work, so developers maintain control of how much history is stored for different types of posts.

WordPress 3.6 is available now as a free download for servers supporting PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0 or later. The changes are also found on websites hosted by WordPress.com, while existing users should be able to upgrade to the latest version through their CMS front-end.