This week, Joomla! 1.7 was officially released to the public. New features in this new version of the popular open source content management system include:

• One Click Version Updating - The new built-in updater handles updates for Joomla and Joomla extensions.
• Multilanguage improvements - You can now associate menu items in different languages for faster navigation. Language packs can now also be built to automatically select the best font for that language.
• Pre-defined search options for search menus. This allows developers to create a menu item that pre-fills out the search fields so end-users can have a built-in search for a specific phrase.
• Better example code for different plug-in types. The enables developers to more easily build custom extensions.
• The ability to automatically validate form data against a list of options during the save operation. This makes it easier to protect against hackers manipulating forms and trying to save invalid data.
• Enables the submit article form to automatically set the article category. This makes it easier for site administrators to restrict users to a specific categoryy meaning content isn’t accidentally added to the incorrect page on a website.
• Batch processing (copy & move) of articles is now available in the same way as it is for categories and menu items.

This is the second major release of Joomla! this year, with Joomla 1.6 released in early 2011. Given that new releases of Joomla! historically are measured in years instead of months this is something of a nice surprise to see from Joomla!. It can be weary on both users and developers waiting for the inclusion of wanted features found only in the next official release of their favorite content management system. I know in the past, I've expressed my own dismay for the lenthy development cycles of Joomla! betas amd release candidates.

A few days ago, I read Mary Jo Foley's article titled Microsoft: Our strategy with Silverlight has shifted. According to an interview with the President of the Server and Tools Division at Microsoft, the company will be shifting support for Silverlight away from the PC and Mac desktop and toward the phone market.

So what’s a developer to make of Microsoft’s messaging (or lack thereof) about Silverlight at its premiere developer conference?

I asked Bob Muglia, the Microsoft President in charge of the company’s server and tools business, that very question and got what I consider to be the clearest answer yet about how Microsoft is evolving its Silverlight strategy.

“Silverlight is our development platform for Windows Phone,” he said. Silverlight also has some “sweet spots” in media and line-of-business applications, he said.

But when it comes to touting Silverlight as Microsoft’s vehicle for delivering a cross-platform runtime, “our strategy has shifted,” Muglia told me.

Microsoft plans to be using HTML 5 to replace the functions currently being provided by Silverlight 5.

It is not the point of this post to debate the merits of HTML 5, Silverlight and even Flash. What is my point though, is that Microsoft appears to me to be desperate. Desperate to come up with a strategic plan that will carry them beyond the day of Windows PCs. Microsoft is desperate to become innovative for the sake of innovation that they're really confusing a lot of their developers. If only after a few years of support, Microsoft is shifting focus of it's Silverlight platform...what potential developer in his or her right mind would support another future Microsoft endeavor? Just take a look at the comments to Bob Muglia's blog post discussing this topic and I think you'll see my point.

I'm not much of a programmer but I can appreciate the value of a good programming language when I see it. While I know Python and dabble with PHP, I've always appreciated Ruby and Ruby on Rails. There is something about the Ruby development scene that perks my interest in this programming language.

Ruby on Rails 3.0 was just released this week. The development of Rails 3.0 has been two years in the making. David August writes:

Rails 3.0 has been underway for a good two years, so it’s with immense pleasure that we can declare it’s finally here. We’ve brought the work of more than 1,600 contributors together to make everything better, faster, cleaner, and more beautiful.

Some of the biggest changes and additions in Rails includes:

• New Active Record query engine - makes it easier to build complex queries over several iterations.
• New router for Action Controller - the syntax has been modified to to favor the REST style
• New Action Mailer
• Manage dependencies with Bundler - Bundler allows you to specify the libraries, frameworks, and plugins that your application depends on.
• XSS protection by default
• Encoding issues resolved
• Active Model: Validations, callbacks, etc for all models
• Official plugin APIs
• Documentation

If you're interested in Ruby on Rails 3.0, check out the download page at RubyonRails.org.