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- This is a pre-alpha release of OpenACS 5.0.0. +
+ This is the first alpha release of OpenACS 5.0.0. This + release has a number of severe bugs, and is not suitable for + production systems. It has passed several release criteria, + including that it installs successfully and that all automated + tests succeed.
Please report bugs using our Bug Tracker at the OpenACS website.
You may want to begin by reading our installation documentation for - Chapter�4. Note that the Windows documentation is - not current for OpenACS 5.0.0d, but an alternative is to use John + Chapter�4, Installing on Unix/Linux. Note that the Windows documentation is + not current for OpenACS 5.0.0a1, but an alternative is to use John Sequeira's Oasis VM project.
After installation, the full documentation set can be found by visiting http://[your-host]/doc. -
+ New features in this release: +
+ Internationalization support. + + A message catalog to store translated text, localization of + dates, number formatting, timezone conversion, etc. Allows + you to serve your users in their language. +
+ External authenticaiton. + + Integrate with outside user databases through e.g. LDAP, RADIUS, Kerberos, MS Active Directory. + Imports user information through IMS Enterprise 1.1 format. Easily extended to support other + authentication, password management, account creation, and account import mechanisms. + + This includes improvements to the basic cookie handling, so logins can be expired without the + user's identity being completely lost. You can set login to expire after a certain period + (e.g. 8 hours, then password must be refreshed), or you can have all issues login cookies + expired at once, e.g. if you have left a permanent login cookie on a public machine somewhere. +
+ User interface enhancements. + + All pages, including site-wide and subsite admin pages, will be + templated, so they can be styled using master template and + site-wide stylesheets. + + We have a new default-master template, which includes links to + administration, your workspace, and login/logout, and is rendered + using CSS. + + And there's a new community template + (/packages/acs-subsite/www/group-master), which provides useful + navigation to the applications and administrative UI in a + subsite. + + In addition, there's new, simpler UI for managing members of a + subsite, instantiating and mounting applications, setting + permissions, parameters, etc. + + Site-wide admin as also seen the addition of a new simpler + software install UI to replace the APM for non-developer users, + and improved access to parameters, internationalization, + automated testing, service contracts, etc. + + The list builder has been added for easily generating templated + tables and lists, with features such as filtering, sorting, + actions on multiple rows with checkboxes, etc. Most of all, it's + fast to use, and results in consistently-looking, + consistently-behaving, templated tables. +
+ Automated testing. + + The automated testing framework has been improved significantly, + and there are automated tests for a number of packages. +
+ Security enhancements. + + HTML quoting now happens in the templating system, greatly + minimizing the chance that users can sneak malicious HTML + into the pages of other users. +
+ Oracle 9i support. +
+ Who's online feature. +
+ Spell checking. +
