New Release: Drupal 7.0 Alpha 6
Few days back, we wrote about ‘Drupal 7.0 – One Step Closer to its Release‘ and ‘What’s new coming in Drupal 7.0‘ in which we discussed some of the very amazing and cool features of Drupal 7.0. After the 5th Alpha version of Drupal 7.0 released last month, now again the Drupal team feels proud to announce the 6th Apha version of the Drupal 7.x for further testing and feedback purpose.
This release includes:
- Drupal has a new core theme: Bartik!
- Numerous fixes to the upgrade path, including basic tests.
- Avails important security fixes.
- Numerous accessibility improvements.
- Setting up Private files is now optional, rather than required.
- Registry made more fool-proof and robust.
- Redesign of Field UI “Manage Display” screen, to reflect multiple view modes.
- Re-implementation of Overlay without jQuery UI, to address numerous critical issues.
- User creation setting now defaults to “Visitors”, with admin approval” for security.
- Installation will no longer fail when settings.php is not present. Nice usability improvement.
- Required modules are once again shown on the modules page.
- Many improvements to input formats and filters.
- Table prefixes are now per-database connection, rather than global.
Drupal Developers and users would be thrilled experiencing the above changes in Alpha 6.
So how can you test the Alpha?
You may start by installing a new Drupal site, or can also upgrade the existing one running on the previous version. If you are setting up a new site, they you may use the development module to have some test data like content users etc. It is just to help you start testing quickly. Make sure to backup of your data before performing an upgrade or start testing.
If you are…..
a) A New Drupal User: If you are absolutely new to Drupal, your little knowledge can prove dangerous. But still you must be used to working with other content management systems and also be willing to lend your perspective in improving the way Drupal works. If it is so… then, you are just the right person to help with usability testing and improving documentation. When you find things difficult, just translate the notes into an issue that will show up in issue tracker. Make sure that you have identified and clearly stated the problem as well as providing suitable suggestions of what needs to be corrected and in what way.
b) Tester: Are you kind of a person who likes doing creative things in an unconventional manner to see the results? Or do you like supervising other’s work and likes to add inputs so as to make their work as good as possible. Actually, Drupal needs these kinds of testers only, who can experiment with different aspects as well as take a look at the issue queue, checking bugs to see if they’re valid and testing patches to verify if they work properly or not.
c) Module and Theme Developer: There is no better way to shake out any lingering bugs with the API and to ensure that your modules and themes will work with the new version of Drupal than to update your modules and update your themes! Make sure to file any bugs that you find!
d) Drupal Ninja: If you are just desperate to learn or adept at Drupal Hacking, a great place where you can start learning is with bug tracker. You may not have the full and right solution to the problem, but your one step in right direction can be good enough for another developer to take it home.
e) Drupal Interface Translator:The days of major changes to the UI strings are over, but Drupal team is still looking for changing texts to fix bugs or to lend clarity in the interface.
When can you expect Drupal 7.0?
Drupal 7.0 will be released when there are no critical bugs and they have had at least one release candidate (RC) without adding any more issues to the list. It all depends on how many people actually come forward and help towards the same.
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