I just rolled the second in the series of Drupal 7 unstable releases for developers (see http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/development/2008-October/031094.html for more info). Among the highlights this release are: * Several awesome File API improvements. Files are now "first-class objects" like nodes and users are, the API has been dramatically cleaned up for better consistency, AND there are a slew of new hooks like hook_file_load() and hook_file_validate() for contrib modules to react to when stuff happens to files. This is a great enabler for some awesome stuff in core like image handling and document management. See http://api.drupal.org/api/search/7/hook_file for more info. A HUGE shout-out to Andrew Morton (drewish) for sticking with this patch throughout its long, LONG development cycle. :) * Also in additional hooks, hooks are now fired whenever modules are installed, uninstalled, enabled, or disabled. See http://api.drupal.org/api/search/7/hook_modules for more info. This should pave the way for some nice DX patches in future unstable releases. * In the DX clean-up realm, hook_user() and hook_nodeapi()'s $op parameters are now gone. Instead of having to switch on $op and figure out what in the world '$arg1' is in the 'load' context (UGH), you instead implement hook_nodeapi_load(&$node, $teaser, $page) and know exactly what you're dealing with. * Permission names are now localizable, which gives permissions human-friendly names in addition to descriptions. This changed the hook_perm() array somewhat. See http://drupal.org/node/224333#descriptions-permissions for more details. * Better security! Drupal 7 is now caught up to Drupal 6 on security patches. Now you can setup a Drupal 7 test site with far less pwnage! ;) Incidentally, for those brave contrib module authors who want to chase HEAD, the Updating Modules page is now broken down by unstable release so you can make changes incrementally: http://drupal.org/node/224333. One thing there is *not* in this release is a lot of major usability enhancements. I'd really like to see this change over the next couple of unstable releases. Drupal 7's API is shaping up nicely, and we're getting tons of patches in that enable new things for our developers as well as clean up silly crap that's been annoying us collectively for a long time. But I'd like to get some focus on real "Wow-factor" things for our end users, too... and sooner than later so we can test them ahead of release and make sure they actually /do/ make things easier to use. :) The Usability team has identified 3 top usability issues to focus on at http://groups.drupal.org/node/7074. If any of you out there have "make Drupal 7 kick ass" as one of their todos, they would really appreciate help on how to break down these major issues into smaller, actionable items, and need some folks to write and test patches to get them addressed. There are also a number of smaller, more bite-sized issues that would be nice improvements, and new features that would make Drupal easier to use. http://groups.drupal.org/patch-spotlight is where this sort of "bubbling up" of important issues is being organized. Since UNSTABLE-1 was released on the 1st, and UNSTABLE-2 on the 12th, let's shoot for UNSTABLE-3 to be towards the end of the month, hopefully with some nice usability improvements in addition to more goodies for developers. Looking forward to reviewing and committing your patches! :) -Angie