K2 | The powerful content extension for Joomla! developed by JoomlaWorks

For the lazy ones, here's a direct download link to v2.6.0: http://getk2.googlecode.com/files/K2_v2.6.0.zip

If we could sum up the highlights of this release, full compatibility with Joomla! 3.0 is certainly highlight no.1! Features like responsive layout, drag and drop on lists or the new combined view of the component's parameters in the backend are now standard with K2.

Thanks to our Community members, we also managed to track down and fix over a dozen bugs which you can browse over at our SVN changelog.

jQuery & jQueryUI have been updated to their latest releases and in Joomla! 3.0 we make sure tha the jQuery library only is not loaded as jQuery is now the main JavaScript library to power the newest Joomla! version (and future ones).

We've also upgraded the Facebook meta tags to use the OpenGraph spec. Previously Facebook had stopped supporting the "image" meta tag which K2 used. So sharing on Facebook should now work as intended :)

We've also introduced JSON format output for the K2 Content module. If you enable the RSS feed option in the moduleparameters and then click on the generated RSS link icon in the module's output, you'll get the RSS feed for the contents of this module instance. If you swap format=feed to format=json in the browser's bar, you'll get a nice JSON interpretation (handy for building even cooler widgets with K2 Content)!

Version 2.6.0 also marks the official introduction of Josetta support for K2. Josetta is a new Joomla! component that aims to make managing multi-lingual sites with Joomla! a piece of cake. Oh, and did we mention? It's built by the sh404SEF folks, Anything Digital!

To the geeks among us, rest assured that K2 will now work just fine with PHP v5.4 (for Joomla! 2.5 and above - Joomla! 1.5 was not made for PHP v5.4...).

Since Joomla! 3.0 is a brand new release, it's bound to change in the coming updates (to 3.0.1, 3.0.2 etc.) so we'll update K2 v2.6 accordingly.

Also, K2 v2.6 is the last release to support all the major 3 Joomla! versions (1.5, 2.5 and 3.0) at the moment. And when we say "major" we mean the versions that most Joomla! sites use today... So we'll only update v2.6 to fix bugs on the way as Joomla! 3.0 progresses, but since Joomla! 1.5 is now considered "end of life", the newest K2 v3.0 currently under development will not support Joomla! 1.5.

So if you plan on using K2 for many years to come, you're still on Joomla! 1.5 and was thinking of upgrading to Joomla! 2.5 or 3.0, now's the time to start planning that. K2 v2.6 will still be functional for Joomla! 1.5 but we will not introduce any new features.

Actually, we're very excited on the work we're doing for K2 v3.0 as we believe it will "raise the bar" once more in the JoomlaSphere :) We are putting all our focus there and gradually we will be revealing some of the cool features introduced as development of K2 v3.0 progresses.

We estimate that a beta of K2 v3.0 will be released before Christmas. As always, the upgrade path from K2 v2.x to v3.x will be a piece of cake.

There will be a follow-up blog post with the minor template changes from 2.5.7 to 2.6.0. But don't worry, you don't need to update your overrides anytime soon ;)

Also expect Joomla! 3.0 compatible updates next week to AllVideos and Simple Image Gallery Pro.

P.S. Our congrats to Kyle Ledbetter for leading the way to Joomla! 3.0. The big change in the UI and overall UX is very important for Joomla! if it wants to keep up with a constantly evolving market. We firmly believe that with great brains and now great looks in version 3, nothing can stop Joomla! from conquering even a bigger share in the worldwide CMS market.