[development] Announcing DRUPAL-7-0-UNSTABLE-6

[Angela Byron]

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
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