v1.6

This is Part 3 of my series on Writing Components For CiviCRM. Part 1 discussed what a component is, and what it does. Part 2 explained how to use CiviCRM's XML-based data definition language to define your tables. But while your tables may now be in place, CiviCRM doesn't know what to do with your data.

For folks downloading the latest code from the svn repository, we have branched the v1.6 code base. The main trunk is now be focussed on v1.7 development and is considered unstable. Please do an svn switch in your directory

$ svn switch http://svn.civicrm.org/branches/v1.6

We will be more proactive about letting folks know about such events before they happen. We'll also be merging 0.4.1 of the dojo when its officially released (its currently in RC2)

We're pretty excited about the cool new features in the upcoming 1.6 release (now in Alpha) - and want to encourage folks to check out / play with these features on the Public Sandbox. So... open the sandbox in a separate window - then login (user = demo, password = demo) and try these out...

• The quick "Contact Search" block in the left column uses a suggestive search widget which finds contacts as you type in letters. Try typing in "ada" and see what happens.
• Site Administrators no longer have to struggle with editing civicrm.settings.php to set and modify site configuration. Most settings are now controlled from the Admin Control Panel » Global Settings section.

We have integrated Selenium Testing Tool for CiviCRM v1.6, in addition to existing UnitTests for checking api functionality.
Selenium automated tests allows user to test most of the civicrm functionality.

For more details check the documentation

We are happy to announce that our 1.6 Alpha release is now available for preview and testing on our servers. We'd like to get as many folks trying out the new features as possible over the next week. This will help us move quickly to a downloadable Beta release - which is currently scheduled for November 29.

You can login to the sandbox at:

http://sandbox.trunk.civicrm.org

User - demo
Password - demo

Highlights of the release - and things we especially like folks to try out are:
* Ajax-based suggestive search in the Contact Search box (left column)
* Dynamically loaded sections in Advanced Search and Contact View Screens

There's been a lively discussion on the mailing list about requirements for linking CMS (Drupal / Joomla) Users to CiviCRM contacts and handling contributions from both types of contacts. We recognize that there is still work needed to handle the variety of use cases out there - but we've made decent progress in the upcoming 1.6 release:

• CMS (Drupal / Joomla) users can be "linked" to either an Individual contact (default behavior) OR and Organization contact.
• Sites will be able to provide a separate user registration link which will expose Organization profile(s) and create a user record, a new contact Organization record - and "link" them.