After More than 2 Years Waiting Joomla 1.6 Beta Is Now Live!
Joomla 1.6 Beta is now available for testing. This is the first major release for Joomla in more than two years and users everywhere are more than ready for it. The overall focus of the 1.6 release is to get rid of barriers that exist in the current Joomla architecture, specifically in regards to the category organizational model and the access control.
The biggest change to the organizational model is that sections can now contain other sections. They also allow for unlimited nesting depth and can be moved around much easier. The biggest change to the access control is the move to an inheritance-based model. Many people have compared it to the model created by Microsoft's NTFS. This will get rid of the giant checkbox lists that are currently in use.
Additionally, changes have also been made to layouts and templates by using semantic HTML and web-standard markup tags. Joomla users will now also be able to update extensions with a single click. Changes have also been made to: 404 redirection, pluralization support, custom language overrides, and support for ASCII within URL's.
The major drawback to making such big changes to the internal architecture is that old sites and modules will not work correctly, however the Joomla team decided that these changes were necessary for a variety of reasons. That means that there is chance that all of your module and templates will need major fixes before they work again. Fortunately, now that modules can be created with granular control, more advanced extensions will be easier to create.
Many people have been wondering why the latest release took so long to become a reality. Louis Landry stated that it took a long time for 3rd party developers to catch up with all of their extensions and once they had been able to do so, it took some time to get the development team rolling again.
As with all beta testing, it is important to not use Joomla 1.6 Beta on any active websites.
Post new comment