Hey there, Drupal people! Time for the monthly unstable release! Lots of goodies this time... For module developers who wish to get a jump on upgrading their modules to Drupal 7 ahead of time, check out http://drupal.org/node/224333 for a list of API changes. Remember: there are only 165 days left until code freeze, when we must cease and desist all world domination plans until Drupal 8! http://drupal.org/community-initiatives/drupal-core has a nice list of all the current initiatives going on (feel free to add your own as well!). If you're looking for the places to make the biggest splash, those are them. :) Or, if you're just getting your feet wet with patching and want something a bit easier to cut your teeth on, try tackling one of the issues listed at http://drupal.org/patch/novice ! Friendly volunteers are always available in #drupal in irc.freenode.net to offer assistance. With that out of the way, here are some of the highlights of DRUPAL-7-0-UNSTABLE-6 (full release notes attached at the end). - In JavaScript-y news, Drupal 7 now comes with jQuery 1.3.2 and jQuery Forms 2.21. it's also now possible to use jQuery alongside other JS libraries (Prototype, etc.)! This requires a small change to your JS code that you can do even now in Drupal 6 as a best practice. See http://drupal.org/node/224333#javascript_compatibility for more details. You can also now reference external JS files from drupal_add_js() rather than having to do silly workarounds with drupal_set_html_head(). Yay for consistency! - Massive re-working of image handling libraries (basically ImageAPI in core), which gives us important groundwork towards ImageCache in core http://drupal.org/node/371374 and even possibly ImageField in core. OoOoOoo... :) - The new database system (DBTNG) now supports pager and tablesort queries via "extenders," which means that we can now work on converting pretty much all of Drupal core queries to DBTNG. Feel free to pick off an issue from http://drupal.org/project/issues/3060/term/ 131 if you'd like to get a head start on learning this essential part of Drupal. - For designers, lots of exciting news! First, page.tpl.php now has some nice, cleaner markup to make it easier for CSS designers to jump in and start theming without any PHP knowledge. w00t! Next up: node.tpl.php: http://drupal.org/node/382870. Also, our aging, ugly pals Bluemarine, Chameleon, and Pushbutton have been retired from core so they no longer offend designers new to Drupal and make them think that apart from Garland, all Drupal can ever be is ugly and non- standards compliant. ;) Hooray! Thanks to JohnAlbin, who took a hit for the team, they're still in contrib if anyone needs them. :) - Drupal 6 -> Drupal 7 core upgrades should actually work now without any manual monkeying with settings.php! :) Yay! - A new filter was added which will let you post a link to <a href="[internal:node/123]">About Us</a> and automatically figure out the right path. -Angie