[OpenLayers-Dev] Announcing: OpenLayers 2.7 RC1

[Erik Uzureau]

The OpenLayers Development Team is proud to announce the first release
candidate of OpenLayers 2.7!!

As of 2.7-RC1, the OpenLayers 2.7 release closes 182 outstanding
tickets, split nearly down the middle between bug fixes and new
features. Although this ticket count is less than previous releases,
the 2.7 release is the first release which has been executed as a
date-based release (instead of feature-based)... which represents a
bit of a departure for the project. Whether or not we will continue to
make releases based on this fixed date style is up in the air, but the
experiment has proved interesting and mostly successful.

The 2.7 release should not present the drastic changes that we've seen
in previous releases (like 2.6). Overall, it turns out to be much more
of a bug fix release, although it does include some exciting new
functionality. Highlights include:

    * Vector-Behavior: Strategies, Protocols, Filters (though the
completion of this going in at RC2)
    * Improved Vector rendering for better performance
    * Canvas rendering class
    * Z-Ordering and Y-Ordering for Vector layers
    * New Basic Measurement Control
    * New OpenLayers.Request interface for AJAX
    * Smarter Popups

... and tons of other new features and bug fixes that you can see
detailed here: http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/Release/2.7/Notes

For information on possible changes that will need to be made between
this version of OpenLayers and previous versions, please look at the
Release notes, available at the Release Notes information[1].

We invite you to help us test the 2.7 release candidate! To test 2.7
in your applications, include the following tag in your
OpenLayers-powered page:

    <script src="http://openlayers.org/api/2.7-rc1/OpenLayers.js"></script>

As always, the source is available at http://openlayers.org/download/.
Bug reports can be filed in Trac, under the 2.7 version and 2.7 RC1
milestone.

There are so many people who have really made this release happen, too
many to name here. OpenLayers is not about the fame, it's about the
glory. You know who you are. Thank You.

A special thanks, though, goes out to John Frank/Josiah Strandberg at
MetaCarta and Chris Holmes from TOPP for putting up the funds and
clearing away the time so that we could have an excellent 'bunker
week' out in Cambridge at the end of July. That bunker was a critical
pow-wow for us in terms of getting things under control for the 2.7
release and also in general for project synergy and getting some great
patches in. Thank you!

Finally, a small plug for the FOSS4G conference in Cape Town at the
end of the month. Several of us from the ore development team will be
there, listening to and making presentations about OpenLayers and
other projects... and hopefully bragging about this release! If you
are planning to be there, please come out of the woodwork and say
hello!

Furthermore, we plan on having a little mini coding bunker on
Saturday, October 4th, if people are around and interested. If you'd
like to participate, sign up here:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G2008_CodeSprint#OpenLayers

All forthcoming RC announcements will be sent only to the Developers
list: anyone interested in tracking the progress to a final release
should subscribe[2] to that list.

We look forward to your feedback on this release.

[1] http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/Release/2.7/Notes#Changestoexistingapplicationsfrompreviousversions
[2] http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo/dev