So it's the festive season again, and I know that everyone is kind of busy with whatever celebrations they've got going on. It's a busy time for everyone, really, regardless of anything.
I just wanted to swing by and say that we're cracking on with things - this will probably be the last blog post from me for 2013, as we move forwards to doing more awesomeness. (Not that there's much of 2013 left, of course

)
So, here's the usual update of what has been happening with us - especially on this last push towards the beta phase. We won't get there before the end of December; we're human, we have things like families and friends to spend time with (yes, even me, I do actually have some friends

), and that is going to cut into the free time we can spend here making SMF. Anyway, here goes:
* Lots of bug fixes, down to tweaks of sentences, display glitches and the like.
* The long-despised "FileZilla issue" has been dealt with once and for all - as of 2.1, all attachment files now have a generic extension that FileZilla won't consider as text, and that means it won't screw up your attachments any more. The upgrader handles all the upgrading and renaming for you.
* The theme page is slightly smarter too - it now won't let you install a 2.0 or 1.1 theme directly into 2.1 because they won't work properly even if you did manage it, as well as being a little overhauled in other ways.
* The rewrite of the notifications system as I talked about last time is coming along; about half the types of alerts that SMF can issue are implemented and working. Still plenty to do, and there's some other changes to come too.
* The mail queue is now always enabled.
* Lots of images dropped, fused into fewer images - saves bandwidth, saves requests. and plays nicer with theme variants. Quite literally dozens of images removed from the package, including a good number that weren't even being used any more.
* Mass move of topics has a few more options now to go with the maintenance > mass remove options.
There's a bunch of other goodies added too, but mostly minor stuff - the big push of late has been dealing with many icons becoming sprites and the notifications/alerts overhaul. But we're getting there.

As ever, it's all on Github -
https://github.com/SimpleMachines/SMF2.1 - if you want to try it out but support will be limited for this pre-alpha software, any issues you have, please do file them on Github. Features are likely not to be added at this stage unless they're hugely important, or exceedingly minor, though.
In the meantime, have a very festive season, celebrate however you celebrate, and don't forget to spend quality time with your friends and family and think nice thoughts about people
