We’ve pushed hard to get the latest batch of updates and changes for WPtouch shipped out to you guys today. As always the package is available for upgrade through your WordPress 2.5+ admin, or through the website on the official WPtouch homepage.

We’ve really overhauled the guts and trimmed, sliced, and optimized everywhere to squeak out some very impressive speed enhancements while also adding features. The package gets smaller but the features keep growing— it’s a challenge we enjoy.

This update packs a lot of punch! Below is a run down of what we’ve added/changed from 1.2.1:

• Switch from Prototype to the more WordPress-native jQuery for javascript (much faster!)
• Fix for wrong re-directs happening unintentionally if you use a static home page
• Elimination of unneeded images, javascript (shaving more than 100KB!)
• More template file cleanups, image & code optimizations
• The addition of more comments in code templates to help you make custom modifications
• Option to enable comments on pages
• Option to manually enter in a new blog title (fixes cases where the blog title runs the length of the header and wraps)
• Option to hide/show excerpts by default on the home, search, and archive pages
• Switch code links are automatically injected into your regular theme’s footer now, and is only seen on the iPhone/ipod touch
• In all, despite the addition of new features we’ve cut load times for WPtouch in half with this release over 1.2.x releases!

The last point is a rather impressive one. In our tests, we’ve found the current version to be up to 2X faster in load time over the previous versions, most notably over 3G and EDGE. These test were done with all features enabled for WPtouch. We’ll be posting more detail on that in the coming days, but we’re pretty sure you’ll notice the difference yourselves. Our testing conditions spanned WIFI, 3G & EDGE with full bars on each and no other phone activity going on to affect bandwidth. We used duanestorey.com to do the testing.

Important!

In this version we’re automatically injecting the switch code into your regular theme’s template. This means that if you have manually placed the code in your template previously, you’ll have a duplicate pair of links. Please remove the manually added one, it’s no longer needed.

Remember to backup any custom files you have modified or added to WPtouch before upgrading. The 2.0 release will both include localization and a configuration which will avoid this upgrade issue entirely. We’re on track for a september release for WPtouch 2.0.