The Joomla project is pleased to announce the immediate release of Joomla 1.6 alpha 2. This release contains many new features requested by the community; most notably, ACL. Other features are listed below as well as what you can expect in the future for Joomla 1.6.

This is an alpha release. It is intended to be a developer/hobbyist preview and is not intended to be used on a production web site.

New improvements/features since alpha 1 include:

• ACL: access management for global permissions as well as content item specific permissions, variable usergroups, users member of more than one usergroup, permissions are inherited, really fast
• Extendable user profile, profile view in frontend, extendable user parameters
• Tableless com_content layouts
• Improved com_content modules (mod_articles_archive, mod_articles_latest, mod_articles_popular)
• Article linker plugin for editors
• New frontend template (atomic)
• New backend template (bluestork)
• New uploader for media manager

Other Joomla 1.6 improvements that existed in alpha 1:

• Mootools 1.2
• Refactored backend
• JForm
• Nested Categories and category parameters
• New views in frontend: categories, category
• Lots of small code improvements, almost cut the code size in half while adding to the functionality
• PHP 5.2 required, huge performance improvements, partially eaten up by new features => 1.6 will be faster than 1.5

What's next?

After alpha 2, the Joomla community can expect a beta release. There are no intentions for a 3rd alpha release.

You can also expect to see the following future improvements:

• Commenting solution is going to be added
• Additional DB drivers
• Lots of small performance/UI/code improvements

We would like to thank all those involved who helped make this release possible.

Download here: http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/frs/?action=FrsReleaseBrowse&frs_package_id=3585

Discuss here: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=454211

On January 25th we reported back from the development coordinator summit. A lot of people noticed that we created three new development-related, publicly-accessible mailing lists for the Joomla development community. The most important reason for us to open up in this way is to attract more developers and enable them to help out with core development. As it is very tempting to start providing us with all kinds of patches, we wanted to explain what it takes to submit a feature patch. Before you fire any questions at us, please make sure you read the full article and also the link to the feature patch policy document.

Bug Fixes vs Feature Patches

What's the difference between a bug fix and a feature patch?

Bug-fix patches have been accepted for more than a year now via the Joomla Bug Squad and serve to fix issues with existing features and systems.  These patches can be attached to the Joomla 1.5 bug tracker when you submit a problem.  For more information see the Reporting Bugs policy.

Feature patches, on the other hand, are for adding or changing functionality to any Joomla version (note submissions for 1.0 will not be accepted due to the approaching end-of-life for that version).  Feature patches could be as significant as whole extensions (like a Comments component), or they could be as small as adding a new argument to a method in a Joomla Framework class.

Revisiting the 1.6 Road Map

First of all it is important to understand the road-map for Joomla 1.6. During the recent Development Summit we resolved what would comprise the Alpha version of 1.6.  These features must be complete before the alpha can be released.  The features are listed below along with their current state of completion:

• Implement a new JForm library package [complete].
• Implement a simple way of providing translation in JavaScript [complete].
• Implement new controller dispatchers for more robust request routing [complete].
• Implement a new access control system that needs to at least emulate what is in 1.5, allow adding of new groups and access levels, and allow you to set new "view" rules for at least articles [nearly complete].
• Implement and standardise several new event triggers [in progress].
• Implement a JContent class that will be used by content plug-ins and views [in progress].
• Upgrade to Mootools 1.2 [in progress].
• Finish the new extension updater work [in progress].
• Menu manager re-work -- added since it's broken in 1.6 [in progress].

After we release the alpha, each beta release will be time-boxed (we hope that not more than four are required). The following is a list of the features highly desired for the final distribution. Each of these features will need to be complete in order to be included in a beta release.  Some of these features will make it in the alpha, but none will prevent the alpha from being released if they are not ready.  Overall we will need significant help from the Joomla development community to complete any of these features:

• Implement unlimited depth categories (but not multi-mapping).
• Refactor the user management system and make it more extensible (eg, allow custom user fields).
• Implement a comments system (including pings and track-backs).
• Implement queued redirects (allows you to, for example, return to the previous page you were on after you edit something).
• Refactor parameters and make them more extensible (for example, plugins could allow you to add additional custom parameters to articles).
• Finish MVC-ing the Administrator components (we need lots of help here).
• Implement CAPTCHA helpers for any form.
• Implement systems whereby external authentication systems, such as LDAP, can map to our new Joomla user groups.
• Re-implement the ability to select multiple categories for some views in com_content (was in 1.0, got dropped in 1.5).
• Implement a database driven installation log.
• Refactor JError.
• Examine the PDF generation system in detail and see if we can make it work properly (otherwise we will look at dropping it if we can't make it work well).
• Localise the Invalid Token messages.
• Drop the Polls component because the quality of that extension is pretty bad and there are much better third-part alternatives available.
• Convert all layouts to semantic, XHTML Strict.
  
• Convert of ini-based "params" fields to use JSON instead of INI format (huge technical and performance improvements).  Note, the language files will remain in INI format.

It is important to understand that we will focus on the features listed above. There are no doubt lots of ideas for what could be implemented, but it is very important to understand that this is the list of features we will focus on.  The features that make it into the final Joomla 1.6 release will depend upon what the Joomla Development Community contributes.  Since some these features are already being worked on, we strongly advise everyone to post a message to the Joomla general development mailing list before you start working on something. If you're not already a member, please apply.

The policy document handles all details, just read the policy document on the development site for those interested in committing back to the project...let's stick to the code and make good things happen!

2008 was certainly a big year with the release of 1.5 in January. I think this has been one of our most successful and ground breaking releases (comparable to Mambo 4.5.1 which really pushed us to a new level back in the good old days). A new stability release will come out this month marking 1.5's first year of life. But what's in store for 2009? Well, just as 1.5 up'd the standard compared to 1.0, we believe 1.6 is going to do continue the trend.

Joomla will hold it's first Developer Coordinator Summit in Australia this month. Anthony, Louis, Sam, Wilco and I are going to be thrashing out the details for finalising the feature list for the final release, and if we are lucky we might even be close to cutting our first alpha after the event (providing we haven't been spending too much time playing cards or chasing kangaroos).

Notwithstanding that there is some other really cool work going on, 1.6 is about two main new features. The first is a that we've completely rebuilt the way extensions are stored in the database and this will ultimately make it easier for developers to make multi-installable packages. I'll let Sam blog about this more at another time.

The other feature is giving Joomla a fully feldged Access Control System. In November and December last year the work on this progressed a long way. A new Access Control component in the Administrator (under Site in the Menubar) now gives you the ability to create new User Groups, new Access Levels (more than just Public, Registered and Special) and several varities of Rules that help you control what a user should or shouldn't be able to do. The User Interface for the rule building and the terminology still needs work but at least it's functional now.

As it stands at the moment, the Access Control System will include the ability to:

• lock groups of users down to access particular functions, like managing each extension, managing menus, installing a particular type of extension, etc;
• lock groups of users to be able to add, edit or remove content in particular categories (in other words, you will be able to define your own variants for existing groups like Author, Editor and Publisher);
• lock groups or users down to be able to view content in new access levels that you define (for example, you could create a Staff group and a Staff access level so that your Staff users can see content restricted to their group).

The "granularity" of what you can do is still up in the air a bit but that's the general direction we are heading. Suffice to say though, that in itself is a major improvement over 1.0 and 1.5.

Most Administrator components and the Admin Menu are now locked down to the ACL system. While a lot of performance tuning is still required, in principle it seems to be working well. We've also introduced the concept of a "root" user that is able to perform any function (he/she sits above the Access Control System). This is just a User ID that is set in the configuration.php file so that in the event of an emergency (like you accidentally blow up all the rules), you can set one user to be login to the site and rescue it from certain doom. It also gives you the ability to limit the permission that even a Super Administrator has which could be useful on some sites.

For developers, the API for Access Control has been given a complete overhaul and we've tried to make it as easy as possible to interface with it during the installation of an extension. If you want to peak at the progress, take a look in /libraries/joomla/acl/ and also in /installation/sql/mysql/install.php (that last file will probably move somewhere else eventually). There are a couple of workability issues to iron out but after that hopefully I can drill into some pretty cool stuff you can do with it next month.

Regarding upgrading your site, we aren't sure of what the process will look like but suffice to say it will be a whole lot easier than the leap from 1.0 to 1.5. However, a version 1.0 site will have to go through a migration to version 1.5 in order to get to version 1.6 or beyond.

Finally, it's worth reminding you that Joomla 1.6 will require a host with PHP 5.2 so start making preparations for changing hosts (or nagging them to upgrade their PHP) now.

Oh, and we should be getting a redesign of the developer.joomla.org site this year to. It's our turn at last :)