1.5 beta-2 overview

What have we done so far?

In the “A short overview on the goodies in the 1.5-beta” article I have descibed all the new features the 1.5 framework brings. I will describe the changes that have been put into place between beta-1 and beta-2. Keep in mind that I describe the features added/removed, but beside that we have fixed numerous reported bugs and of course I am not 100% complete here…

1. User features

• Implemented caching
- Implement frontend and backend (apc, eaccelerator, db, …)
- Implement page and extensions caching
- Improve metadata and caching header handling
• Refactored session management
- Added SessionHandler support to JSession
- Added database session handler
- Added file session handler
- Added APC session handler
- Added eAccelerator session handler
- The database is now used as default session store instead of the file system
• Complete refactoring of the installer
• Added new archive libraries to better support zip|gzip|tar file extraction
• Removed restriction for removing core modules from the Modules Manager
• Several improvements on default Joomla! templates, including support of newest browsers
• Added open-id support
• Further LDAP improvements
• Further improvements on the media manager like the ability to remove multiple files, or image preview option
• Moved most of the global configuration settings to component configuration
• Implemented latest TinyMCE Wysywig editor
• Removed statistics functionality in core framework
• Added windows support on teh FTP layer
• Incorporated a solution for the general itemid problem
• FTP Filesystem Layer credentials rethink included already; now asking for a password once per session

2. Designer features

• Removed patTemplate engine to improve speed and flexibility. Library is still included for backward compatability, but is deprecated for framework usage.

3. Developers features

• Added JPATH_COMPONENT_SITE and JPATH_COMPONENT_ADMINISTRATOR defines
• General MVC improvements to simplify component implementations that follow conventions
- Ability to handle more then one view
- Support for component table handling
- Improvements to search engine friendly url handling
• Improved feed parsing and feed support
• General improvements to search engine friendly url handling
• Implemented mootools javascript library
• JError rework, removed dependency on PatError
• HTML library improvements

4. Miscellaneous

• Included an accessible and W3C compatible template example named BEEZ.