joomla 1.6 stable almost out

Now that RC1 is available, we'll be focusing on 1.6 compatibility. It's not there yet, but we think the changes should, overall, be minor from an initial standpoint. I can't give a timeframe, other than to say compatibility will not be with the 3.1 release later this month. We're gunning for one of the point-releases after that date, which could be January, but could also be in February.

The biggest development issues with Joomla 1.6, that we're aware of from a preliminary investigation, will be creating the proper user. Initially, we plan to register all users as the default user (similar to registered in Joomla 1.5). Eventually, we plan to let the admin select a user type that Facebook users' should become upon registration.

Hope that helps. It's somewhat intentionally vague because we don't want you to rest your hopes or make promises to a client based off of our timeline. Joomla 1.6, in general, will have bugs in the first release. Always be careful when jumping into a new release!

Finally, it wasn't asked, but there will not be a separate subscription for JFBConnect on 1.5 or 1.6. The same subscription would provide access to both releases.

Can't answer that yet. There's a good chance they will be separate components though due to the differences in the Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.6 APIs. In actuality, it would only be a few files that would differ though. It's something we're still working out.

Having a unified component sounds great, but it greatly adds to complexity with development and debugging because in many places you have to say "If 1.5, do this, if 1.6, do that". At first, it's not bad, but with Joomla moving to a 6 month schedule (supposedly) for releases, that becomes a lot of if's all over the place and eventually makes the code unmanageable. We've seen many big components that try to keep compatibility with many releases in one monolithic file eventually cause stagnation. Community Builder is a good example with the fact that when they add new features, they still have to make sure they work with Mambo.. ugh!

It'll be tough for many developers, and I don't know how each will handle each extension, including us. Hope that all makes sense!

Yes, the transition from 1.5 being the most popular to 1.6 being most popular will be a while, in our opinion.

As for 1 unified component vs 1 for J1.5 and 1 for J1.6. In either case, the main structure of JFBConnect will be the same, so it will be a matter of just installing the correct version to your site. Any data from JFBConnect for J1.5, we expect, will transition over to JFBConnect for J1.6 smoothly and there shouldn't be anything that breaks in the process. We do expect that JFBC for J1.6 will have a few more configuration options eventually, for the different user capabilities in J1.6 that you'd want to configure though.

In general, 2 components shouldn't be a big deal to end users as it really is a matter of installing the correct version, and beyond that, they should 'look' almost identical in both versions.

Thanks for your feedback, always good to hear.

Joomla 1.6 definitely has some issues, even in the RC1 state. We're a little hesitant to support it, but we're still planning to have something out in Q1 of next year. Hopefully sooner, but we try not to publicize release timelines because we're small and don't always hit our own internal goals.

No problem about the support. It's what we do. We enjoy helping others, and frankly, getting feedback from non-subscribers is vital to our continued growth. Thanks for your interest, and we hope to win you over one day

No timetable. It's still a ways (months) out. We'd like to still hit the Q1 target I mentioned above, but by no means is this locked. We're putting the final touches on the next bug-fix release for JFBConnect 3.1, which we think will resolve all outstanding issues. At that point, like we did when 3.0.3 was out, we focus hard on the next release. We'd like to make JFBC 3.2 capable of running on Joomla 1.6, and 3.1 has laid some groundwork towards that goal, but there's a lot of moving parts involved, so I just can't guarantee it yet.

Out of curiosity, do you have a Joomla 1.6 site up (or will be soon)? What are your impressions of it? We've been playing with it a bit, but would like to hear how other people are using it, and plan to migrate from 1.5... or if you're working on a new site.

Thanks!