A quick view on Joomla! 1.6.0 Alpha [hope]

Joomla! 1.5 was released  Jan 22, 2008.

One and a half year later, Joomla!1.6.0 Alpha - Codename [hope] appears on the horizon (download area Joomla 1.6). Since June 23th Joomla! 1.6 Alpha was downloaded 9,500 times (as of July 2nd). The 9,500 downloads comprise of 8,000 in zip format, 1,000 in tar.gz format and 500 in tar.bz2 format. Zip seems to be the most popular format. Many open source projects rely on the tar.gz format (f.e. Drupal) and limit with this decision unnecessary there downloads. In this case Joomla! is a good example of user friendly behaviour!

What's already new in Joomla 1.6 Alpha[hope]?

1. The shiny new ACL system
   1. create new user groups,
   2. assign users to groups
   3. assign groups to access levels
   4. assign content  viewing permissions to access levels
2. The overhauled category manager
3. Upgrade to MooTools 1.2
4. Now, comments are in Core
5. No legacy mode anymore in 1.6
6. A completely rewritten menu system and menu manager
   1. Menu / module assignment
7. Multiple style variations in a template
8. The "extended" extension manager
9. We have URL redirects!
10. No polls component anymore in core
11. Refactoring
12. Performance improvements

In this blog entry, I will describe my first impressions of this new version.
It is important to understand that Joomla! 1.6.0 Alpha is a  technology preview, not a final product.
DO NOT INSTALL JOOMLA! 1.6.0 ALPHA ON A PRODUCTION SERVER FOR SECURITY REASONS.

The Installation process is nearly the same than in Joomla! 1.5. New is that we need now PHP 5.2+ and MySQL 5.04+. Also new is the possibility to choose a name for the admin user. In the background this user is still called administrator.

I installed the sample data and noticed that there will be new sample date for Joomla! 1.6 because for now, there are only a few entries.

1. The shiny new ACL system

Probably the most wanted feature for the last years! :-) It's there. Do you see the new tabs?
By the way, in this screenshot you can see the changed username of the administrator too.

1.1 create new user groups

The new Groups tab provides a possibility to create and edit groups, f.e. Park Rangers. Users can be assigned to all the groups.

1.2 assign users to groups

I have created a new user (Toni Tester) and assigned him to the new group ParkRangers.

1.3 assign groups to access levels

The next interesting tab is access levels. In the past you had only the choice between the three predefined levels Public, Registered and Special. Now you can create your own levels, assign groups to this levels and use them f.e. in the context of menu links to limit the access.

1.4 Assign content viewing permissions to access levels

It's very easy to assign content to this new possibility of individual access levels - great!

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2. The overhauled category manager

The category manager is now a subitem of the articles link. Good decision! The term "Frontpage" changed to "Featured" and is also a subitem of Articles.

In former times the category system was a bit complicate and often people had problems to understand the idea behind. Now it is possible to organize categories in a tree structure and I think, this will make it much easier to understand the concept of categories.

The next screenshot shows an example of tree structured categories, Queensland is assigned to Australia, Australia to Countries.

3. Upgrade to MooTools 1.2

What the hell ist "MooTools"?

MooTools is a compact, modular, Object-Oriented JavaScript framework designed for the intermediate to advanced JavaScript developer. It allows you to write powerful, flexible, and cross-browser code with its elegant, well documented, and coherent API.

For more info have a view at wikipedia or at the MooTools website.

MooTools is inbuild in Joomla! and you can use it for very cool effects and many other things. Be inspired by demos.mootools.net

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4. Now, comments are in Core

I had read a lot about this topic (f.e. here), but I didn't find a way to comment an article in this Joomla! release. May be it is not integrated in the Alpha version :-( [need help].

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5. No legacy mode anymore in 1.6

There is no legacy mode anymore! The legacy mode was invented to be able to use older components which are not made for Joomla! 1.5. The problem was that this mode was to slow because of it's complexity and people say it was unsecure too.

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6. A completely rewritten menu system andmenu manager

Rob Schley mentioned in his posting on the Joomla! dev list.

The menu system and menu manager have been completely rewritten and now feature a number of major improvements that should make them more powerful, efficient, and easier to customize.

One very nice feature is the possibility to set access levels to menu items

6.1 Menu module assignment

Another good  feature is the possibilty to assign the visibility of modules to menu links. In Joomla! 1.5 this feature was only accessible from the modules edit page.

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7. Multiple style variations in a Template

With Joomla! 1.5 the xml based parameters in templates were introduced. Since then it was possible to have your template in different color variations, widths and so on. The new problem was "How to save the parameters (styles) for my website".

Voilá - here ist the solution!

The default styles for rhuk_milkyway:

and the individual cocoate styles for rhuk_milkyway:

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8. The "extended" Extension Manager

Update your components and plugins automatically ... at the moment there is nothing to do :-)

Discover new components and plugins ... at the moment there is nothing to discover :-)

Warnings from your components and plugins ... at the moment we have no warnings :-)

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9. We have URL Redirects!

That is a cool feature. Easy to use and very effective. You can find it under the menu Tools.

The idea is to be able to create search engine optimized links. Not only the search engines are important. Your website visitors will love the short and userfriendly links too.

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10. No polls component anymore in core

Did you know? There was a poll component in Mambo, Joomla! 1.0, Joomla! 1.5... Now ... It's gone. Have you ever used it?

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11. Refactoring (what is it?)

The code of the components com_content, com_users and com_weblinks is refactored to make it easier to maintain, customize and extend these components.

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12. Performance improvements

A number of performance improvements to the plugin- and the menusystem were made that should create a visible improvement on larger websites.

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My first impression of Joomla! 1.6.0 Alpha [hope]

Joomla! 1.6 will be a great release when it is ready. "Hope" is a good name:-). Some changings in this release are badly necessary and I hope the stable version will come up fast!

By the way, when will the stable version released? Remember what Rob said?:

we’ve put together an alpha build to give people an opportunity to see what we’ve been working on and have a peek at what’s coming in 1.6. It is important to understand that this is a technology preview, not a final product.

In my opinion, this technology preview is amazing and give a lot of hope for the new version and a lot of trust in the Joomla! project as well.

And as in every Joomla! Version, don't ask for a stable release - It's ready when it's ready :-)