[OpenLayers-Dev] ANN: OpenLayers 2.4 RC1 now available!

[Schuyler Erle]

The OpenLayers Development Team is proud to announce the first release
candidate of OpenLayers 2.4. While the public API maintains backwards
compatibility with previous 2.x releases, OpenLayers 2.4 introduces a
number of internal changes that are important for developers working
inside the OpenLayers library, including: 

      * Support for rendering vectors on the map, using both SVG and VML
        (finally!)
      * Vector Geometry classes
      * New UI Handler classes
      * New and improved Control classes, including a generic toolbar
        class
      * Substantial enhancements to existing Layer classes, particularly
        WFS
      * A massive effort to track down and eliminate memory leaks of
        JavaScript objects and DOM nodes
      * Better auto-generated class documentation
      * Tons and tons of bug fixes!

As of 2.4-RC1, the OpenLayers 2.4 release closes 106 outstanding
tickets, more than any other OpenLayers release to date! For this we are
indebted to the many members of the community, as listed in our new
contributor file[1], who have put their hard work into improving
OpenLayers. Please see the release notes[2] for OpenLayers 2.4 and the
list of closed tickets[3] for more details.

We invite you to help us test the 2.4 release candidate! To test 2.4 in
your applications, include the following tag in your OpenLayers-powered
page:

  <script src="http://openlayers.org/api/2.4-rc1/OpenLayers.js"></script>

As always, the source is available at http://openlayers.org/download/.
Bug reports can be filed in Trac, under the 2.4 version and milestone.

We look forward to your feedback!

Regards,

The OpenLayers Team

[1] http://svn.openlayers.org/branches/openlayers/2.4/doc/authors.txt
[2] http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/Release/2.4/Notes
[3] http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/Release/2.4