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Joomla 4.2 Alpha 2 - A glimpse of whats to come

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Joomla 4.2.1 Alpha2- A glimpse of whats to come

The Joomla Project is pleased to announce the availability of the second Joomla 4.2 Alpha for testing.

What is this release for?

There are two main goals for Alpha releases:

  • Providing developers with the basis to test their extensions and reporting any issues well before the final release

  • Allowing users to discover the new features introduced to Joomla 4.2.

For a complete list of known backward compatibility issues for version 4.2, please see Potential backward compatibility issues in Joomla 4 on the documentation site.

What is this release NOT for?

This alpha version of Joomla 4.2 is not suitable for production sites. It is for testing only.

Where to get it?

Download Joomla 4.2.0 Alpha 2

To always use the latest build of Joomla 4, we invite you to use the nightly build packages (updated every night).

To make it easier for newcomers, you can launch a free Joomla 4 website for testing at launch.joomla.org.

When is the final release due?

Joomla! 4.2 (general availability) is due to be released on or about 16th August 2022. The planned milestones are:

Alpha releases

Where new features are added and many changes are made.

  • Alpha 1: March 29th, 2022 - Done
  • Alpha 2: April 26th, 2022 - This release
  • Alpha 3: May 24th, 2022

Beta releases

In the Beta stage, we are making a freeze on what features can be added, but minor changes to what is already in can be made.

  • Beta 1: June 7th 2022
  • Beta 2: June 21st 2022
  • Beta 3: July 5th 2022

Release candidates

When in the release candidate phase no more can be added or changed, we are testing and bug fixing making the product stable for launch day.

  • Release candidate: July 19th 2022
  • Final release: August 16th 2022

This whole process relies on people coming forward to help make it happen.

Please note that dates may be subject to change depending on the availability of volunteers and circumstances beyond our control.

What’s new in Joomla 4.2?

Improved the extension installer to be more robust > See here and here

=> Merged and available

Added permissions (ACL) to Media Manager actions > See here

=> Merged and available

Added Save button to front-end article editing to save and stay in the article > See here

=> Merged and available

Added ordering parameters to web service requests > See here

=> Merged and available

User defined hide table columns > See here

=> Merged and available

Only make Upload button available once the user clicked the checkbox that they are prepared > See here

=> Merged and available

Enable use of Form::process() in FormModel >See here

=> Merged and available

Convert log type field to fancy select >See here

 => Merged and available

And many more!

We are firmly committed to making the next generation of Joomla the best. So far, these are the first features that have been committed to version 4.2. We expect to commit other features for the coming alpha3 releases.

What are the plans for Joomla 4.2?

Currently, we’re at the start of the journey of Joomla! 4.2. There are several projects which, with your help, could become part of Joomla! 4.2, if they are release-ready by 1st June 2022:

Shortcut keys

Make it easier to perform tasks in Joomla! Using keyboard shortcuts

https://github.com/joomla-projects/gsoc21_accessibility/pull/8

Add Category List View by Custom Field

https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/discussions/18457

Redesign global configuration

The current global configuration screen is one big form, chances of losing your settings is high by just clicking on another extension name. By redesigning the global configuration we can improve this.

https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/issues/31495

We’re very close to being feature-ready for Joomla! 4.2 and can then concentrate on stabilizing Joomla! 4.2 over the coming weeks. To make this happen we need a few last tests for the listed PRs.

To learn more about our development strategy, please read this article.

How can you help Joomla 4.2 to develop?

To help ensure the 4.2 release and our major features are “production-ready”, we need your help testing releases and reporting any bugs you may find at issues.joomla.org.

Most of all, we encourage extension developers to roll up their sleeves, seek out bugs and test their extensions with Joomla 4.2 and communicate their experience.

We would like to remind our users that Joomla 3.10 intends to be the last release of the Joomla 3.x series and will primarily be a release containing backports of API changes from the Joomla 4.x development branch to help ease the transition to the next major release for the community.

We’re focusing on Joomla 4 to make it the best. Therefore, we do not plan to release any more 3.x minor versions - unless it proves to be really essential. All feature proposals should be directed toward the 4.2 release.

Not much time is left to add new features to Joomla 4.2, so we really would like to see some people helping out with these proposed new features.

Where can I find documentation about Joomla 4?

We have started to provide some tutorials to help you with Joomla 4. We’ll be writing more tutorials to help you understand the significant changes of Joomla 4. You can find the existing ones, like creating a Plugin or a Module for Joomla 4, namespaces conventions, prepared statements, using the new web asset classes and many more here.

We encourage developers to help write the documentation about Joomla 4 on docs.joomla.org to help and guide users and other extension developers.

A JDocs page will help developers to see the existing documentation, and the documentation still needed.

We invite you to check it regularly, update it and provide the missing content: https://docs.joomla.org/JDOC:Joomla_4_Tutorials_Project

Most of the feature documentation will be needed once we have reached Beta (feature freeze).

Should I plan to upgrade to Joomla 4.x?

Joomla 4.x is Joomla’s latest major version.

Joomla 3.10 is released alongside Joomla 4 as the last minor release of Joomla 3 (see this article).

Joomla 3.10 will continue to be supported for two years from its release, giving you plenty of time to plan your migration to Joomla 4 and update your extensions (if required) to become Joomla 4 compatible versions.

As it is now more than six months since the release of J4.0 you should be planning or in the process of migrating to the latest version of Joomla.

We provide resources to help with the migration on the documentation site.

Related information

If you are an extension developer, please make sure you subscribe to the general developer mailing list, where you can discuss extension development. News that may affect custom development will also be posted there from time to time.

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