With WordPress 3.4 set to arrive this week, it’s a great time to familiarize ourselves with the new features and additions. The new version of WordPress brings many improvements, including custom backgrounds and headers, a live theme-customizer, revamped XML-RPC, better support for internationalization, and many bug fixes and enhancements. Let’s dive in and see what WordPress 3.4 has in store!

When WordPress added featured images as a core feature in 2.9, a new function was added — add_theme_support. It was (and is) obvious that this is a _precursor_ of things to come: the standardization of theme features. Since its introduction, add_theme_support handles post-formats, automatic feed-links, and now in version 3.4, custom backgrounds and headers will be added to the list. http://sswi.me/L8A9Q7 via @smashingmag