Brian Teeman

When you have been using a software application like joomla for as long as I have certain things become second nature.

But it is only when you see a newcomer struggle to work out what to do that you truly appreciate that there is room for improvement.

Don't Make Me Think - says Steve Krug

Yesterday I had to build a form for a new web site. But this wasn't the usual form with a handful of fields and a couple of required elements.

Oh no! This client required a form with almost 200 fields (194 to be exact), each field required validation, and there shouldn't be a single table element anywhere in the form.

A new version of the Joomla 1.5 series was almost released today, which is possibly the last release before 1.6. This is a security and bug fix release and you should ensure that you upgrade all your installations.

At the exact time of publication the download file is not publicaly available but will be very very soon.

In a recent blog post I talked about an extension under development that has really got me excited. And it takes quite a lot to get me excited these days!

Tonight I got a quick skype message from the author that the release is only hours away.

Patience may be a virtue but I've been waiting for this for a very long time now and the anticipation is really getting to me.

Wow - its been a year since the last release of Joomla 1.0!

Whilst all new development has taken place in the 1.5 and soon to be released 1.6, Joomla 1.0 is officially still a "live release" for a few more months now.

So what does this mean?

Well to me at least it means that the joomla 1.0 codebase is rock solid with no known security issues for 365 days.

There aren't many open source content management systems, or any open source software projects, that can say that.

Or are there?

On friday I blogged that the current state of the joomla svn was not in a testable state.

Well after a hiatus in activity there has been a renewed burst in activity over at joomlacode.org and I highly recommend that all developers for joomla check it out now and follow development.

On January 22nd 2008 Joomla! 1.5 was first released to the world. It's hard to believe that joomla is now one year old.

It was a long time coming but for me at least the wait was worthwhile. Without the flexibility and power of 1.5 I would never have been able to produce complex sites like  www.reformjudaism.org.uk and www.mitzvahday.org.uk or this blog.

A new version of the Joomla 1.5 series was released today, which is possibly the last release before 1.6. This is a security and bug fix release and you should ensure that you upgrade all your installations.