I've previously written about the upcoming release of Joomla 1.6. The Joomla community is eagerly awaiting this exciting version, but it hasn't been known when we will see a working version.
Now, it seems there is a release date - at least for the Alpha version of Joomla 1.6.
The Alpha release will be an installable version with ACL and Mootools 1.2 as the main features. Nested categories will appear in a future alpha release, as outlined below.
The core team wants your help - see this message from core team member Rob Schley:
The Development Coordinators, the 1.6 Release Team, and a small group of experienced developers will be shaking things up over the next couple of weeks.
We’re taking a fresh approach to Joomla 1.6. In the next day or two, we will be moving the current trunk into an "experimental" branch and replacing it with an installable and usable package that includes a working ACL implementation and MooTools 1.2. From there, we will focus our attention toward completing nested categories and creating an alpha release by June 22nd, 2009.
We realize this is a major change but we believe that having a stable and familiar foundation will allow more people to contribute which we hope will enable us to adopt a more iterative and faster release cycle. This, in turn, will allow us to release more often with more interesting and useful features packed into each release.
Here’s how you can get in on the action:
1) Help us add cool, new features by submitting patches to the Joomla 1.6 Feature Patch Tracker at
http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/tracker/?action=TrackerItemBr...
Once we have a fairly stable package with ACL, MooTools 1.2 and nested categories, we would like to have a couple of patch sprints where we will review and commit patches that have been submitted to the tracker.2) Help us fix those silly bugs by submitting bug reports to the Joomla 1.6 Bug Tracker at http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/tracker/?action=TrackerItemBr...
3) Help us make the system easier to use by suggesting changes that will improve usability. Send your suggestions to the Joomla CMS Development Mailing List/Group at http://groups.google.com/group/joomla-dev-cms with “Usability” in the title.
We will be clearing this out when we swap out the existing trunk with the new one.