Just a quick note that Views 2 beta2 was released last night; it is primarily a bug fix release for PHP4 users. PHP4 users are encouraged to upgrade. PHP5 users can if they like, but there will be very little noticeable change.

There are two things I forgot in my last post:

So, Views 2 is now basically feature complete. Oh, there's still a few really rough spots --

• Most of the help files are stubs
• None of the arguments convert from Views 1 to Views 2
• None of the settings on your fields will convert from Views 1 to Views 2
• Nothing that isn't directly from core will convert from Views 1 to Views 2 just now; well ok, CCK stuff probably will.
• Taxonomy 'depth' isn't supported -- it was broken in Views 1 and I didn't think of a way to fix it until just a couple of days ago.
  

I didn't post about it, but I released Views 2 alpha 5 a few days ago. If you're using PHP4, you want to use the -dev version, though; there's a couple of critical bugs that are PHP4 specific that have since been fixed. Then again, sometime in the next few days (Monday maybe?) I will release Views 2 beta 1, so you may just want to wait.

Yes! It's a post not about Drupal! There are a few other items in my life. Ok ok, I'm shamelessly taking advantage of the fact that I know at least a few people will see this and maybe a few of them will laugh:

I just rolled the release for View 2 alpha 4. One important thing is that this should help people get back in sync with CCK; yched had been staying on the very bleeding edge of the handlers I'd created, and as a result people with the newest CCK but still using Views 2 alpha3 had problems. Sorry about that, folks.

The big new feature in this release is relationships. Here is the easiest way to understand relationships:

Go create a node type. Call it 'track'.
Create two more node types. Call them 'album' and 'artist'.

A few months ago, Dmitri made a post about how Views 2 needs development help. This post was very ill-timed; I wasn't in a position to tell people how to write the next bit, so it seemed like there were suddenly a horde of people that were willing to help, but they all needed handholding and specific tasks. That wasn't really available at the time. I needed to get Views 2 to a certain point before that could happen.

Then a strange thing happened.

I got Views 2 to that point. I created a task list. I posted about the task list.

After nearly a month, Views 2 Alpha 3 is released. See the release notes for real details, but the highlights are exposed filters and live preview. Live preview may be the single sexiest thing I have or will ever add to Views.

I've also published my todo list and developers who want to help can take on some of those tasks. With a little sweat, I think we can beta by early April.

Note: Slides from my presentation are posted at the end. If you don't care about the rest but want the slides, skip to that.

I have actually been in Boston since Friday morning, but a low level of burnout has kept me away from blogging for a bit. There has been a LOT going on lately with Views 2 and Panels 2 and the Drupal Association and there's definitely a lot of the whelming in the overwhelming.

Yes, everyone, the day has arrived!

Actually, technically, it arrived yesterday, but I chose not to announce alpha1 in case it had catastrophic bugs. It didn't, but I immediately had to do some serious retooling which breaks all pre-existing views. Annoying.

The day has arrived! Views 2 is going public; the UI is basically complete, and everyone can play with it. Lots of stuff works; there's still a long list of features that are not yet implemented. And many of these features, other Drupal devs can help on.