Hello from everyone on PLT! We have been busy over the past weeks testing, and re-testing Joomla 3.5 beta 1. Timelines are always the first thing people want to know; followed with what features will be available.

Timeline update for 3.5

Timelines are a tricky part of planning. Bug fixing can be a challenging task to plan for. Sometimes the answer comes instantly and sometimes we’ll lose days on a single issue. We’ve been working tirelessly on an issue for the last couple weeks. We are adjusting our timeline appropriately.  

 

The following updated timeline :

• January 27th 2016 - 3.5 Beta 2

• February 16th, 2016 - 3.5 Beta 3

• February, 2016 - 3.5 Release Candidate

• March 9th, 2016 - 3.5 Stable Release

Nightly builds of the 3.5 branch from GitHub are available. That package is available at https://developer.joomla.org/cms-packages.

Please note that dates may be subject to change depending on availability of volunteers.

What’s new in Joomla 3.5

The big question is, what is new in Joomla 3.5? We have the following new features:

PHP 7 Support

Joomla 3.5 will support PHP 7. PHP 7 is bringing a lot of great improvements to PHP. More information about PHP 7 is here: http://www.zend.com/en/resources/php-7

Update emails plugin by Nicholas Dionysopoulos

https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/6886

Joomla! issues bug fix and security updates every few weeks. Most users are completely unaware of updates unless they are in the back-end of their site. This pull request adds a plugin which checks for updated Joomla! versions. When there is an update, an email sends to the Super Users.

Plugin to gather basic anonymized data as an opt-in feature by Don Gilbert

https://github.com/joomla-extensions/jstats-server

https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/8291

https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/8346

This plugin sends basic stats on your server to a Joomla controlled central server. We can better understand our install base and end user environments. This will only submit the following data:

• Joomla version

• PHP version

• database engine and version

• server operating system

In the interest of transparency to the community this data is public through our API  here and here. Graphs will display Joomla version, PHP version and database engines of sites. 

No data is collected until user opt-in. The plugin can be disabled at any point. A post-install message will display to make site owners aware of the plugin. 

The privacy of Joomla users is important to us. We want to allay any fears that we are collecting personal identifying information. The source code for the server code that gathers the data is on GitHub .

Count items by Peter Martin

https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/6916

https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/6934

https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/6938

https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/6936

This set of pull requests adds the number of published, unpublished and trashed articles in the Category Manager for articles, banners, contacts and newsfeeds.

Added site and admin links to Module User Status by Rick Spaan

https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/7174

Adds switches to the mod_status module to show/hide links to the frontend and backend of the site.

Ability to add a user CSS file to Protostar by Roland Dalmulder

https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/4211

Adds a check to see if the file user.css exists and loads the file to allow user customization.

Download system/environment information by Radek Suski and Roberto Segura

https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/7129

Implementing a possibility to download system/environment information for support purposes.

TinyMCE drag and drop images by Dimitris Grammatiko

https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/7435

Adds the ability to drag and drop images into the tinyMCE editor that comes with Joomla.

Backwards Compatibility break

We have a backwards compatibility promise to make sure code doesn’t break. However - there are circumstances that can force us to no longer keep this promise. In Joomla 3.5 this is the case. Due to changes in PHP 7, we had to rename the String class to StringHelper otherwise Joomla! cannot run on PHP 7. This is a minor change and we don’t expect any issues from it. For those interested, you can read more about it at Update to String package 1.3.

A note on routing

The new routing system will not be in the 3.5 release. The routing is postponed until 3.6. The new routing  work is not complete and has not been tested thoroughly. The production leadership team understands that the change in features can be disruptive and is an inconvenience to the developers expecting new routing we are truly sorry. If you are interested in helping us out on testing the new routing system, please contact Roland Dalmulder at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

How can you help Joomla! development?

There are a variety of ways in which you can get actively involved with Joomla! It doesn't matter if you are a coder, an integrator, or merely a user of Joomla!. You can contact anyone of our PLT members, to get more information, or if you are ready you can jump right into the Joomla! Bug Squad.

The Joomla! Bug Squad is one of the most active teams in the CMS development process and is always looking for people (not just developers) that can help with sorting bug reports, coding patches and testing solutions. A great way for increasing your working knowledge of the Joomla! code base, and also a great way to meet new people from all around the world.

If you are interested, please read about us on the Joomla! Wiki and, if you wish to join, email Roland Dalmulder or Tobias Zulauf, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., our Bug Squad coordinators.

You can also help Joomla! development by thanking those involved in the many areas of the process. In the past year, for example, over 1,000 bugs have been fixed by the Bug Squad.

The project also wants to thank all of the contributors who have taken the time to prepare and submit work to be included in the Joomla! CMS and Framework.

A Huge Thank You to Our Volunteers!

This beta release is the result of thousands of hours of work by dozens of volunteers.

A big thank you goes out to everyone that contributed to the 3.5 release! Right now we're over 1,200 commits since 3.4.5's release with over 110 people contributing to those commits (not including testers and other non-coding activities). Best of all is that the new features are awesome!