News and announcements

Today marks reaching Drupal 7's 0 critical bug milestone! We've rolled one final beta release to shake out any last minute problems and fix strings. Please help!

This release includes:

• Upgrade to jQuery 1.4.4 and jQuery UI 1.8.6
• Numerous upgrade path fixes
• Numerous accessibility fixes
• All critical bugs fixed!

For the full list of changes, see the release notes.

Hey, wait! But there are 0 criticals! Why another beta?!

As of today, Drupal 7's critical issue queue has reached 0. A huge thanks to the tremendous effort of hundreds of people who have helped bring us to this momentous milestone!

By traditional definition, we should be entering release candidate phase. However, while we have been focused on smashing criticals, we have accumulated a "major" issue queue that's currently 5 pages long, and have been neglecting to prepare for string freeze, which happens at RC1.

So, Dries and I felt that it was appropriate to have one last chance to take a final pass through the issue queue and find any straggler release blockers that might still be buried, and to identify and fix issues that impact string freeze (anything that changes something wrapped within the t() function).

From Here to RC

So. If you're in MAINTAINERS.txt, or otherwise knowledgeable about the issues in the core queue, we urgently need your help in taking one last look at your queues over the next day or two and making sure there aren't any remaining critical issues buried in the "major" list.

Because Drupal is by definition release-ready right now, we are going to strictly timebox the following:

• Maintainers have until 11:59 PM Pacific US Time Wednesday, November 17 (07:59 AM UTC) to dig up critical issues from their majors queue. Move them from "major" to "critical" so that we can discuss. (Note that these will have to pass an extremely high bar; we've had almost 3 years to identify such issues.)
• While going through your queues, if you find issues that impact string freeze, please tag them "string freeze."
• I want to roll RC1 to no later than November 30, 2010 (with the caveat of any new security/data loss issues will block the release if still active at that time). Ideally, we do RC1 even earlier (Dries's birthday is November 19, or failing that, US Thanksgiving represents a GREAT time for many of you to get away from your family and work on Drupal :)).

To be clear, once RC1 happens:

- All strings are frozen.
- All markup is frozen.
- The UI is frozen.
- The API is frozen.
- The theme system is frozen.
- Drupal 7.0's release is imminent.

So please, help do your part to get Drupal 7 DONE!

(What follows is the standard "how to test this alpha/beta release" spiel.)

The Drupal Association and the European Drupal community are pleased to announce that DrupalCon Europe will be hosted in the United Kingdom in 2011. We are inviting engaging speakers and are planning over 75 sessions that appeal to everyone from beginners to top level developers, designers and architects. This is the perfect opportunity to network, gain new skills and share your passion for Drupal. Please support this great event.

We are happy to announce that registration is now open for DrupalCon Chicago, which will be held March 7-10, 2011 at the Drupal Tower in downtown Chicago! You can sign up and purchase your ticket today at http://chicago2011.drupal.org/

DrupalCon Chicago will feature dozens of curated sessions and panels from some of the most influential people and brightest minds within the Drupal community and beyond, as well as countless opportunities for networking, code sprints, conversations, and more.

The conference will be held at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers, located in downtown Chicago. During DrupalCon, the Sheraton will become the Drupal Tower, your one-stop location for all conference activities and accommodations.

When you register, you'll have the opportunity to purchase your event ticket, reserve your hotel room in the Drupal Tower, and sign up for pre-conference training sessions as well as the official March 8 after-party at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History! If you already have a drupal.org user account, you can use it to automatically sign in to the DrupalCon website.

We're also pleased to announce our open invitation for speakers at DrupalCon Chicago. This is your opportunity to share your knowledge with DrupalCon attendees. Find out more at http://chicago2011.drupal.org/speaker-application

Sessions that have been confirmed so far include speakers on design and user experience, coding and development, implementation and configuration, theming, business and strategy, and the Drupal community.

In addition to the regular session programming, DrupalCon Chicago will also feature keynotes by Dries Buytaert, Clay Shirky, and Jared Spool. As some of the leading minds in today’s ever-expanding new media landscape, these speakers will inform, engage, and inspire DrupalCon attendees.

DrupalCon Chicago will also include a number of events new to DrupalCon, including a Day Stage, the Drupal Means Business track, and Core Conversations, in addition to the traditional after-conference sprints.

Those interested in helping sponsor DrupalCon Chicago can download a copy of our sponsor prospectus, but don't delay as sponsorship slots are limited and going fast!

You can keep up-to-date with the latest information about DrupalCon Chicago by going to http://chicago2011.drupal.org/ or following us on Twitter @drupalcon