Dotclear

It is not without emotion, as Violetta would say, that we are getting ready to unveil before your astonished eyes the candidate release of the next version of Dotclear. This version precedes the final one by a few weeks. We were so eager to expose it to your rigorous and nevertheless gracious testing that we indeed decided not to wait until the final version to make it public. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you Dotclear 2.6-RC.

The set

Because every show needs an appropriate set, we have entirely repainted the stage. We therefore present you with a new visual identity, together with a set of icons that match the new color scheme:

We have also taken advantage of this opportunity to create an additional variation to the Blowup theme, Plumetis. Let it be known that our secret plans to take over the world include projects for major improvements in the development and configuration of themes in the next version (2.7).

Stage direction

We have also carried on our ameliorations in terms of ergonomics and accessibility. There is still a long way to go—ARIA, ATAG and others aren't fully there yet—but we have made a number of noteworthy improvements in this domain.

The administration area will also be easier to use on various supports. Our objective for this version was to drastically improve the usage of the administration on mobile devices and small screens. Mission accomplished! A few pages aren't fully optimized yet, but we will work on them in the future.

The orchestra

Dotclear 2.6-RC is brought to you by a beautiful, merry, and prolific team work. We have sustained a few minor storms, but the mood was (almost) always delightfully good. While JcDenis, baby bottle in one hand, kid in the other, and keyboard on his lap was entirely recoding the maintenance and backup interface as well as the management of plugins and themes, nikrou was lovingly cooking up categories and media management in between two javascript implementations. Kozlika was making icons and torturing DOM, CSS, coders and users together. Lipki was aflutter around the widgets, closing ticket after ticket with artistic dexterity; so did sogox and bernardleroux. Dsls delved once again in the deepest of our basements to secure the stage and prepare the shows to come.

Franck Paul directed the whole with the big booming voice of the irrascible and grouchy dictator he ought to be. Cherry on top of this masterful production: a commit by Pep himself!

In the meanwhile, community managers Samantdi, Guillaume, Krazy Kitty (smoothly acknowledging yourself: one of the perks of translation) and Otir were, well, managing the community on the digital waves. Pinkilla, Tomer, Llu_ne, BG, mirovinbien, Jean-Michel, Aide Pour—yes, that's an odd name even for us—, Sacrip'Anne, Lomalarch, Philippe, xave, anthom, Patidou, Tetsuo, Cunégonde, Denis, Gilsoub, Pierre, brol, Armony and others also put their shoulders to the wheel, documenting, testing, animating the mailing list, writing whimsical minutes of our weekly IRC meetings, making coffee, updating the server's Dokuwiki, geolocalizing photos, and much more.

(Now's the point where we realize with utter dread that name-dropping will necessarily result, as we cannot but have forgotten people, in bitter chiding... and a few beers!)

The singers

That's you!

We need you to test this version, to report bugs, to help updating the documentation, to report potential translation mistakes (in French, English, and other languages while you're at it), to send us marshmallows.

So, in short: download, install, use, and let us know all about it!

We will publish here, before the final version of 2.6 comes out, more detailed information on the changes brought by this new version, particularly on the code side.

Overture

Paa, paa, paa, paa, papam... you can download version 2.6-RC here. Avanti la musica \o/