"The new ACL system is well on its way. You can now create new user groups, assign users to groups, assign groups to access levels, and assign content viewing permissions to access levels. We are still working out the details of the user interface and business logic for the advanced access permissions. The upgrade to MooTools 1.2 is complete and we’ve begun cleaning up core JavaScript code to make it more compact and efficient. 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.

We’ve refactored a number of other components including com_content, com_users, and com_weblinks to make them easier to maintain, customize, and extend. We’ve trimmed a lot of legacy code and media from the core which reduced the package size by about 30% or so. We’ve also made a number of performance improvements to the plugin system and the menu system that should create a visible improvement on larger websites.

So, in light of all of that, 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. There are many issues, rough corners, dripping faucets, and outright broken pipes. We know this and you should too. Many features are still broken or extremely buggy so don’t panic if something doesn’t work as you might expect it to. As I said before, there is still much to be done.

You can download a copy of the alpha at http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/frs/?action=FrsReleaseBrowse&frs_package_id=3585

Lastly, I’d like to thank Hannes, Gergo, Ercan, Louis, Andrew, and Sam for all of their hard work.

Enjoy,

Rob Schley"

Have you tried it yet? How is it?

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