Visit: http://developer.joomla.org/coordinator-blog/304-joomla-16-alpha-2-released.html
New improvements/features since alpha 1 include:
- ACL: access management for global permissions as well as content item specific permissions, variable usergroups, users member of more than one usergroup, permissions are inherited, really fast
- Extendable user profile, profile view in frontend, extendable user parameters
- Tableless com_content layouts
- Improved com_content modules (mod_articles_archive, mod_articles_latest, mod_articles_popular)
- Article linker plugin for editors
- New frontend template (atomic)
- New backend template (bluestork)
- New uploader for media manager
Other Joomla 1.6 improvements that existed in alpha 1:
- Mootools 1.2
- Refactored backend
- JForm
- Nested Categories and category parameters
- New views in frontend: categories, category
- Lots of small code improvements, almost cut the code size in half while adding to the functionality
- PHP 5.2 required, huge performance improvements, partially eaten up by new features => 1.6 will be faster than 1.5
Download:http://joomlacode.org/gf/download/frsrelease/11322/45252/Joomla_1.6.0-Alpha2-Full-Package.zip

