The wide lead of BD and VS made it clear that voters had a clear preference for these sets.

Question 20 was not mandatory, so a few hundred people skipped it, but the responses we did get (3366 of them) reinforced the fact that the two most popular sets were also the most popular 2nd choices, which made the decision of the judges to go with the popular vote an easy one (take that, electoral college!).

A few of the individual icon metaphors also had a significant lead over the other choices.
Dashboard: 1333 voters (40%) chose a house as the best metaphor. We agree, so both Ben and Verena will be replacing their Dashboard icons.

Media: 2097 voters (65%) chose the combination camera + musical note icon, which was part of Ben’s set. We also really loved it, and Verena will amend her media icon to incorporate this idea.

Plugins: 1682 voters (53%) selected the outlet plug metaphor, which both Ben and Verena used in their sets.

Tools: 1581 voters (49%) liked the combination of two tools better than anything else, so Ben and Verena will try this approach.

So those are the results, and soon you’ll see the new icons coming to a 2.7 installation near you.

Need another look at the entries to remember which one you liked best? Here are some reminder images, as well as the identity of each set’s creator.

BD was Ben Dunkle, a designer, professor and artist from upstate/western New York State. In case you’ve already forgotten, Ben’s icon set is the winner of Project Icon and will become the default icon set after a few minor changes.	VS was Verena Segert, our runner-up, a designer from Germany who presented sets in both grayscale and blue. Her blue icons received more specific voter comments than the gray ones, so we’re planning the second color palette to be in shades of blue so that we can use the blue icon set.
GB was Guillaume Berry, a designer from France who submitted two sets in the same style in order to propose a couple of different metaphors. One of his sets came in third while the other came in last, but whether you only look at the higher scoring set or you combine their votes, Guillaume had the next highest percentage of votes, and many people liked the metaphors he used for various icons. In fact, given the enthusiasm of the community for Guillaume’s icons, we think a great plugin would be one that would allow the user to upload the icon set of their choice. Any volunteers?
OSD was the Open Source Design class at Parson’s in New york City, taught by Mushon Zer-Aviv and consisting of students Alexandra Zsigmond, Ed Nacional, Karen Messing, Khurram Bajwa, Leonie Leibenfrost. Teacher and students worked together to determine their metaphors and visual style.	LS was Luke Smith, a designer from Iowa who specializes in icons among his other design pursuits.

If you need to hire an icon designer any time soon, we highly recommend our Project Icon contestants, who all delivered great work in a very short timeframe. It was great to work with all of them, even for such a short assignment.

So, to sum up:

1. The winning icon sets by Ben Dunkle and Verena Segert will be incorporated into WordPress 2.7 RC1.
2. Someone should write a plugin that would allow anyone to upload a custom icon set (I bet the other contestants could be convinced to release their icon sets for such a purpose).
3. 2.7 is still trucking away, but we can always use help with patches, especially for IE6! (I know, that wasn’t in the main post, but it’s true, so hmph)

Thanks again to everyone who participated in this experiment, and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. And congratulations again to Ben and Verena!

• Numerous style improvements and refinements.
• All admin notices now go under the page title.
• PHP Notice fixes.
• Dashboard widget options now properly save.
• Menu fixes.
• New design for Quick Edit.
• Canonical feed URL fixes.
• Walker fixes.
• An update for Hello Dolly.
• Plugin installer updates.
• Numerous font updates.
• Updated login logo.
• Switch position of “Save Draft” and “Preview” buttons in publish module.
• File upload support for MS Office 2007+ file formats.
• Media upload buttons won’t show if the user doesn’t have the upload capability.
• Canonical redirects only do yes-www or no-www redirection for domains.
• Shift-click checkbox range selection improvement.
• Add New User page now separate.
• Tag suggest only suggests tags (not other taxonomy terms).
• QuickPress shows “Submit for Review” if user cannot publish.
• Private posts/pages, and password-protected posts/pages are rolled into new “Visibility” section of publish module.

If you have already installed Beta 1 or Beta 2, you can update to Beta 3 via the Tools -> Update menu. If you have problems, or if this is your first time in the 2.7 beta ring, you can download and upgrade the old fashioned way.

Get 2.7 Beta 3.

Once we decided to go with a contest format instead of a single-designer gig, about half the original volunteers changed their minds. The remaining designers each submitted two icons (Posts, Links) in their proposed style. At this stage a couple of designers were thanked for their submissions but eliminated from the competition because their icons were considered too far afield from the WordPress visual style. The remaining designers were given feedback on the icons they had submitted and given about a week to complete the icon set for the menu as well as the list/excerpt icons that are shown on the Edit Posts screen. All but one of these designers finished a complete set, giving us five sets in total.

So now we need to choose a direction. For each of the icon sets, we’ll show you the set itself, the designer’s introduction, and some feedback from the lead developers. After you’ve reviewed all five, place your vote for the set you think has the visual style that is the most suitable for WordPress 2.7. This will be followed by additional votes on specific icons, so if you like the specific image used in one set but like the style of another, you can vote to change the metaphor for a given icon. You’ll also be able to leave general feedback throughout the voting process. When voting has concluded, we’ll review the comments and the votes, and will declare a winner.

Things to bear in mind when making your selections:
A week is not a long time to create 13 icons. The winning set will undergo a revision to be refined, and some icons may be substituted. We asked for all icons in grayscale for the contest. An “on” state and a larger size for screen headers will be designed by the winner. It seemed like too much work to have everyone do multiple states for so many icons.

Ready? Go and take the icon survey. Voting will remain open for 48 hours from the time of this post to allow people from all time zones a chance to participate before we close the survey and make a decision (since we’d like to include the new icons in Beta 3).

A Note Regarding the 2.7 Release Date:
As we approach Beta 3, bug tickets continue to be added to Trac, the pain of making things look good in IE6 continues to be felt, and the need to improve accessibility looms. If you love WordPress, are a decent coder, and want to contribute like these icon designers contributed, please consider contributing a patch to help with one of these efforts. Jump right in on current Trac tickets, or pop into the #wordpress-dev IRC channel to ask what to do.

FREE RSS CONTENT FOR BLOGS ANF WEBSITES

• The Upload button didn’t always show. Fixed.
• JS on the Dashboard broke for blogs with no comments, causing several UI elements to “freeze”. Fixed.
• Recent Drafts Dashboard module didn’t show correct times. Fixed.
• Various Autosave fixes.
• Redirect after deleting a page from the editor went back to the deleted page. Fixed.
• Fixed loading of translations for default TinyMCE plugins.
• Added avatars to the edit users list.
• Added some missing translations.
• Fixed some validation errors.
• Fixed some PHP warnings and notices.
• Handle inconsistent file permissions during auto upgrade
• Change Publish box layout to better accommodate internationalized text
• Fix quick editing of the last page in the Edit Pages list
• Fix Screen Options for IE
• Fixes for choose tag from tag cloud
• Rewrite rules fixes for certain hosts
• Don’t check for updates on every page load
• Easier post box dropping
• Preview fixes
• RTL fixes
• Fixed broken wp-mail
• Plugin update and install fixes
• First draft of contextual help tab

If you have already installed beta 1, you can update to beta 2 via the Tools -> Update menu.  Beta 1 does have a bug in the automatic upgrade that breaks certain setups, so be prepared to download and install Beta 2 manually if you experience problems.

Get 2.7 Beta 2.

(CNN) — CNN.com readers around the world celebrated Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential victory over Sen. John McCain Tuesday night. For most of them, the historic significance of Obama’s win was the most important part of the election.

Mark Massi updated his election marquee all night as the results came in.

more photos »

Elated supporters took to the streets of Chicago, Washington, Atlanta and other cities across the globe, dancing and cheering for their candidate.

"This is the most wonderful night of my life," said an emotional David White, who grew up during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

White said he remembers when African-Americans couldn’t go to amusement parks and didn’t think a day like this was achievable.

"I’ve seen this country vindicate itself," he said. "I welled up with tears just looking at the turnout … I just thank God that I was alive to see it." iReport.com: ‘We made it’

Tave Johnson put the significance of the win in perspective.

"It’s history," said Johnson, who spent the evening at the Grant Park Obama rally in Chicago, Illinois. "I’m half-black and half-white. I talked to my grandparents today, and they told me this is historic. To be honest … I never would have guessed it would happen." iReport.com: Celebrating victory at Grant Park Obama rally

Many iReporters were quick to praise the victory as a momentous message to the children of the United States and around the world.

Samiour Patterson has two children and said Obama’s victory means everything to him and his family. "It’s amazing when I can sit here and finally say, ‘you know what? You can do this. If you want to be the president of the United States when you grow up, no one can stop you.’"

His family celebrated Tuesday night with a "yes we did" cake. Patterson is African-American, but he says it wasn’t about black or white in the election.

"It means a lot to us, not just because he’s black, but because he’s qualified," he said. "That’s why the crowd is so diverse. It’s a true picture of America. We’ve come together as a United States of America rather than just black people or white people. We’ve come together as a people and elected the best choice for America." iReport.com: ‘Yes we did!’

Although Ithaca College sophomore Chloe Scott voted for McCain, she joined hundreds of students in celebrating Obama’s win at the upstate New York campus.

"I’m just so happy the college came together," she said. "I’m ready for change in this country. I think we are all so happy the election is over." iReport.com: Students join in the national anthem

Eric Tinoco, a third-generation Mexican-American who also attended the rally in Grant Park, agreed that Obama’s win was "an important step forward for our country" — especially for the children.

"We’ve all inherited a racist legacy," he said. "I think this would certainly be a touchstone for all minority children growing up in the United States. They can see, if he can do it, I can do it." iReport.com: Grant Park rally for Obama

High school student Marcus Harun said Obama’s victory has restored his faith in the United States.

"We the people, everyone’s created equal — that’s what we say," he said. "But I’ve never seen it put into action until something like this. I really got touched when I saw the number, that he had enough electoral votes to be the next president of the United States. I’m not saying that either candidate was the one I was looking for, but I’m really happy for our country." iReport.com: ‘A great day in American history’

Many iReporters attended or hosted election parties where the historic election outcome was celebrated into early Wednesday morning. Several, including Tave Johnson and Eric Tinoco, attended the massive Grant Park rally for Obama in Chicago. Others, like Kevin Phillips of Indianapolis, Indiana, attended their own election parties.

"The mood here rivals a New Year’s Eve party," said Phillips. He watched the election results with about 60 people at the small music venue where he works, and said nearly everyone at the party was an Obama supporter. iReport.com: ‘Obama wins!’

Mark Massi hosted an election party at his Chicago apartment for nine of his fellow Obama supporters. He used a large marquee purchased from Craigslist to display real-time election results throughout the evening.

"This room is elated," said Massi when the election was called. "There’s a few people here who have broken down into tears … It’s a lot of fun here in Chicago right now. I’ll just say that." iReport.com: A big night for Chicago

It was a big night for Washington, D.C., as well.

Marisa Uchin was one of thousands of people that took to the streets of the district and began "dancing and cheering."

"It was just so alive," she said by phone as people cheered and car horns sounded in the background. "By the time we got to the White House, there were a thousand of us dancing. The bus drivers [and] cab drivers are honking their horns. It’s like a big cloud has been lifted off the city." iReport.com: Obama victory at the White House

Countries around the world were also abuzz with excitement over Obama’s victory. Thomas Cohan attended a party in Paris where American Democrats living abroad came together to watch the election results.

"We estimate the crowd was around 1,500 people. A lot of people were turned away as there was more than double the expected turnout," he said. "Every time a new result was posted, the crowd would erupt in yells and screams. It was like a rock concert." iReport.com: Americans in Paris celebrate Obama victory

Even supporters of Sen. John McCain said they were excited for Obama’s historic achievement.

Barbara Rademacher, who voted for McCain, said she was grateful that she was able to see Obama’s victory.

"All I can say is, thank you God for letting me live to see this day," she said. "My sincere prayer is that we can finally all live together without the heavy baggage of the past weighing us down." iReport.com: ‘I am so happy,’ even as a McCain voter

David Kronmiller said he hopes McCain supporters will give Obama a chance, even if they do not agree with some of his policies.

"I think they’ll be surprised," Kronmiller said. "I mean, look at him. He’s inspired so many of us. So many people now care about their government in a way they’ve never cared before. Young people are engaging, caring about their lives and their futures. And I think that no matter what, that’s worth it."

iReport.com: ‘Obama won — now maybe we can move forward’

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What is your favorite feature in WordPress 2.7?
( polls)

If you have a extra minute or two, we’ve also put together a survey that lists all the new features and allows you to rate them, as well as give additional feedback if you’re so inclined. If you want to participate, take the 2.7 Beta Favorite Features survey.

Speaking of the final release, it will not be available on November 10th as originally scheduled.  We are two weeks behind schedule at the moment.  We need a little more time to finish the visual design, do a round of user testing against that finished design, and do a proper round of public beta testing. Our plan is to keep working as if Nov. 10 is still the release date.  However, instead of releasing the final 2.7 on the 10th, we will make a release candidate available instead.  The release candidate is intended to be a high-quality, almost-finished release that we are comfortable recommending for broad use.  After Nov. 10, the focus will be on fixing high impact bugs turned up by those of you testing the release candidate. I suspect 2.7 will be ready for final release by the end of November.  A specific date will be set as we progress through the public beta cycle and get a feel for how solid the release is.

Get WordPress 2.7 Beta 1.