Just as a reminder, beta releases are not suitable for production sites.  The GA release date is now going to be January 24th, 2012.

Joomla has announced Joomla 2.5 Beta 1, with a stable GA (general availability) release coming January 10, 2012 (give or take a few days, depending on availability of the fine people who donate their time and energy).  The decision has come based on a poll Joomla released called Vote for the Version. And it only makes sense really, with 1.0 being the intital release, and 1.5 being the next ‘long term release’, that 2.5 would be the replacement long term release following 1.6 and 1.7.

Joomla 2.5

Anyone who is currently running version 1.7 will have no trouble updating to 2.5 with the new update feature built into the extension manager.  Everyone else will have to upgrade using the jUpgrade component (and hope for the best).  Make sure you do a full backup of your files and database before attempting!!  You’ve been warned.

Joomla 1.5 will reach end-of-life with no further security updates after April 2012, and the next version of Joomla (Joomla 3.0) will follow shortly after in July 2012, followed by 3.1 in January 2013, and the next next long term release version 3.5 in July 2013.  Maintenance and security releases will still follow the same version structure (ie 2.5.1, 2.5.2) as required/necessary.  Our recommendation for sites running 1.5 will be to upgrade to version 2.5 by April 2012 or shortly there after.  This will probably not be easy, and certainly not without some planning.

No one is going to contest that Research in Motion has had more then it’s share of woes recently, and certainly they are far from over.  And then if their October extended service outage wasn’t enough to infuriate a more then a few customers, likely the drunken inexcusable behavior of a couple of executives that grounded an Air Canada flight from Toronto to Beijing will add a few more.  Then we have the BlackBerry officials in Indonesia who could face charges related to a stampede over a sale.  Then today a National Bank Financial analyst cut his target price on RIM shares to just $10 — a horrific outlook for a company whose shares where over $70 in February.  Also today a group of computer hackers announced they have “jail-broken” the PlayBook tablet, gaining root access to operating system files, which is raising questions about the security of the very devices it’s pitching to corporate and government clients.  And to throw a little more fuel on the fire, the company has announced it no longer expects to meet its full-year earnings forecast, bringing us to our topic of conversation: The write down on inventories of the PlayBook tablet.

Most folks speculated that it was the lack of PlayBook sales that caused RIM to announced it was slashing the prices.  Some figured the lack of sales were due to high cost, but now speculation is that it is actually because of the release of the Amazon Fire, which is around $300 cheaper than the basic PlayBook.  Analyst Shaw Wu has been quoted saying “Our understanding is that RIM was blindsided by Amazon pricing its Kindle Fire aggressively at $199.”  Amazon is reportedly loosing money on every Amazon Fire they sell; however, RIM’s price cuts mean that it too is losing between $50 to $75 for every PlayBook sold, begging the question: Is RIM’s PlayBook a great product that is simply a victim of unfortunate timing?

Despite the fact that the PlayBook is beginning to look like the worst and most expensive decision that RIM has ever made, from a consumer standpoint, the answer is yes – it’s a great buy.  There is incredible value in this great device, which right now is without doubt a deal to be had.  From a corporate standpoint, the answer is no.  This latest $485 million writeoff in value means that the PlayBook, which has generated at absolute most 2% of RIM’s revenue, has swallowed up $1.5 billion of cash and forced it into straitened circumstances.  But if you are a tablet fan, or a Blackberry fan, then Christmas came early!  RIM is have a holiday fire sale, and has slashed PlayBook prices by $300 across the board (for a limited time, the tablet starts at $200 for the 16GB version).  But now RIM employees are getting an even better deal: $99 for the 16GB, $150 for the 32GB and $200 for the 64GB.  Suddenly the tablet is now hard to keep on the shelves.  Best Buy sold out on Monday, and we expect more shortages could easily follow – the same thing happened earlier this year with HP’s TouchPad.  If it keeps up, RIM’s employees will have the only tablets left!  More then likely a lot of employee’s will be trading their employee-discounted RIM PlayBook for a Christmas bonus courtesy of eBay.  Keep your eyes peeled, there are deals to be had on RIM’s tablet, and at these prices you won’t be disappointed.

So far there has been no company that can even come close to the success of Apple’s iPad. Many have tried and failed (the latest being HP). However there are now some heavy weight contenders that are expected to unveil their own version of a tablet computer. Google and Amazon are two of the most successful companies in the computer world, and are expected to announce the release of their tablets very soon. In fact Amazon is expected to make their big announcement today. Like Apple, Amazon has a very successful internet marketing machine. Its proven ability to sell a wide variety of products gives it a distinct advantage over previous tablet  contenders. Along with the financial resources to sell their new tablet below cost, makes this serious competition for the iPad. In fact this may very well be the most serious threat yet to iPad’s dominance.

Creating a new Space Desktop

There are three ways to create a new Desktop.  The first way, and likely the most common, is by launching Mission Control by hitting F3, and hovering your mouse over the top left or right corner, where you’ll see a window appear with a + sign – clicking it will create a new Desktop for your within Mission Control:

The second way to create a new Desktop space is by enabling full screen mode from the right-hand corner of the title bar:

When you do this, a new Desktop will be created in mission control for the full screen application. All full screen applications automatically get their own Space Desktop:

The third way to create a new Desktop space is by dragging and dropping a currently-open window from the Mission Control section to the top left or right corner until the Desktop icon appears. This automatically creates a new Desktop and moves this application to it.

Moving Applications and Windows Between Spaces Desktops

Moving windows between your spaces desktops is as simple as dragging the application you want to whatever Desktop you want to move it to.  This is a great way to quickly organize a busy or chaotic workspace:

Removing Spaces Desktops

If you need to get rid of Desktop spaces, just hover your mouse over the top left corner of the Desktop you want to remove in Mission Control and you’ll see an ‘X’ appear (any windows or applications currently in the Desktop you are closing will be shifted to your main Desktop 1):

Assigning Windows to Specific Spaces Desktops

You may decide you’d like to have certain windows always open in certain Desktops.  To do this, navigate to the Desktop you’d like the application to open in and right-click on the application in the Dock (yes, you have to have the application in the Dock) and click Options > This Desktop.  You can also have the application be available to All Desktops or select the default of None:

Assigning Keyboard Shortcuts to Move Between Spaces Desktops

You can actually still move between Spaces Desktops  using your keyboard, but the setting has now moved to the Keyboard section of System Preferences.  Simply open up the Keyboard settings, and select “Mission Control” from the list under the “Keyboard Shortcuts” tab:

The day as finally arrived – the much anticipated release of the Lion. Mac OS X Lion 10.7 has finally been released, “The new king of the desktop” as Apple calls it. It will power Apple’s new line of MacBook Air notebooks and the new Mac Mini’s just released, and  is also now shipping preloaded on all other Apple products.

OS X Lion was first unveiled during the annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2011 and Apple fans have been eagerly waiting it’s arrival ever since.  The new operating system represents a leap forward in terms of current operating system development.

“People have been doing the same things on computers for years. Clicking, scrolling, installing, saving. With OS X Lion, we’ve challenged the accepted way of doing things by introducing new features that change the way you use a computer,” Apple explains on it’s website.

With 250 new features and 3,000 new developer APIs, OS X Lion is posed to be the greatest Mac OS released to date.  We will be loading it on the Mac’s we use here in our web design studio in the coming week, so be sure to watch for our initial impressions and complete analysis coming soon!

So what does this mean for Joomla users and web designers?  Is it a worthwhile upgrade? What if I’m designing a new site?

The answer to these questions will depend largely on your situation and needs, and if you have an existing Joomla site, what version you are currently running. Today’s release is the answer to some security and development issues.

For the average user, security is going to be the primary upgrade factor with over 300 bug fixes and security patches.  The other major feature is the new built-in updater called ‘Quick Update’.  To anyone with an existing Joomla site, as well as web designers managing numerous Joomla sites, today marks an exciting day in the CMS world. This has been a highly sought after feature, and one that used to help WordPress win CMS battles. With one-click version updating, the excuses to neglect upgrades will soon run thin. Joomla just climbed a few more rungs of the security ladder.

Some other seemly-minor features that may be useful to the average user:

• the ability to add a background image to the custom HTML module
• the ability to specify the site name before or after the page title
• a “remove installation folder” button as part of the installation process.

For a developer, the latest release of this open source content management system is going to be far more important.  Joomla 1.7′s framework is now completely separated from the CMS – meaning that it’s possible to build new applications with the Joomla framework.

The big issue remains for 1.5 & older users: In order to start enjoying this Quick Update feature, you will need to go through a painful & not-quick-at-all upgrade to get your site up to 1.6.5 before you can actually update to 1.7.  It should also be noted that any themes or extensions you may have installed will also have to be 1.7 compatible.

The push towards updating to 1.7 is being accelerated by the fact that Joomla 1.6 comes to the end of it’s short life next month.  After August 2011 there will be no more updates issued for any security vulnerabilities or bugs that pop up.  Joomla is urging anyone already running 1.6 to upgrade, but there are mixed messages being delivered for 1.5 users: “If your Joomla 1.5 site is working well, I would not move it yet. Joomla 1.5 will be supported through April 2012. Joomla 1.8 will be released in January 2012, and it is a long-term release, meaning it will be supported for 18 months instead of 6 months.“

Furthermore, the situation is still unclear for anyone building a new website. The stipulation is that any extensions you need must be 1.7 compatible, and many extensions (such as shopping carts) are still only available for 1.5, as this was the last long-term release.  Most minor extensions that are common for 1.6 should work with 1.7 – but as with any upgrade, there are no guarantees.

So is it worth upgrading? You decide.