The JBoss Portal team is proud to make available a snapshot release of JBoss Portal 2.6, targeted to developers. We hope, with this early release, to have the community provide feedback on the direction we are taking, with respect to usability and overall design enhancements in JBoss Portal 2.6.

You can find the downloads, here, and the updated documentation, here.

Target: Usability

"Every day is usability day!"
(I'm not exactly sure what that means, but one of our Product Managers keeps running around the office screaming it, on a caffeine-fueled high... so I thought it went well in this part of the blog.)

Anyway.. here's a quick-and-dirty list of the most important changes in this release:

A new theme: We have added a new theme, "Renaissance", as our default theme.

Personal Dashboards: Users can now have their own personal dashboards, able to customize the portal pages to their liking. The dashboard is accessible by a new navigation region in the layout.

Drag-n-Drop Windows: Using the script.aculo.us library, we have added Drag-n-Drop window support for logged-in users in their personal dashboard area.

AJAX + Persistence: Changes in window positions are now persisted for users logged-in, while in their personal dashboard area.

Admin Portal: Administrators now have a dedicated Admin Portal with all the functionality to manage the portal, cms, users, and roles.

Portlet UI reworked: As this release cycle progresses, you'll find the bundled portlets are also being reworked, with respect to their usability.

STAY METAL!
Roy Russo