In October, 2009 Microsoft released version 1.1 of the Microsoft SQL Server Driver for PHP. This driver is fully maintained with an active release and development cycle, is extensively documented on MSDN and contains multiple features missing in previous SQL Server specific drivers such as native UTF-8 support, MARS support (necessary for SQL Azure), PHP 5.3 support and more.

Microsoft got in touch with us and put in all the legwork to make Gallery 2.3.1 support this new driver, so we're very happy to point you to their patch and a pre-patched Gallery 2 zip. If you're using Microsoft SQL Server, using this version will move you over to a backend driver that is supported by Microsoft, so their support team will be able to help you resolve any issues specific to using Microsoft SQL Server. A patch file that adds said support to existing installs can be found on Sourceforge at:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2941873&group_id=7130&atid=307130

For your convenience, we've uploaded a pre-patched version of Gallery 2.3.1 to our Gallery 2 nightly build page:

http://www.rabinovich.org/G2/gallery2-sqlsrv.zip

Remember that the Gallery Team is officially no longer working on Gallery 2, there are no future releases of Gallery 2 planned, and that the Gallery team is not providing direct support for this patch. That said, hopefully this patch is helpful to some of you!

Gallery 2.3.1 (Skidoo) is now available for download! This release adds compatibility with PHP 5.3, with minor enhancements in a couple plugins.

As always before you ask for help, please, please read the README -- we've made an effort to answer all of your questions there. Especially read the known issues section. Upgrading is quick and easy, but if you're upgrading from 2.1 or earlier there are a few things you should know first so be sure to scan the upgrading instructions.

Go download Gallery 2.3.1!

Thanks for your continued support! Read on for more details...

Beta 3 is here! With this final beta, we begin the sprint to our full release! Your feedback in our beta series has been priceless so far, help us with our final push to work out the last little bugs and issues and polish up the product! Download it now! or read on for more details...

As announced last month, the Gallery team has been hacking away on all things Gallery 3 in Santa Fe, New Mexico for the last 2 days. Here's a few things you might be interested in:

• Photos! - These are just mine and I'll be updating them as the weekend continues, and we'll have a full list of photos once we're all back at home.
• User Survey Results - Julia, our OpenUsability student for 2009, stopped by to present the results of the user survey that she conducted over the past month which is full of very interesting information.
• Gallery Trac Timeline - We've found a lot of new bugs and fixed a lot of bugs (including major things with "organize" and contextual menus), and created a bug category for documentation issues. The timeline shows most of the details.
• Our "team dinner" isn't until tonight, but we've already managed to drink a lot of beer (including local beer made with chili peppers) and eaten a lot of great food.
• It's been great having a few people that aren't on the core team stop by! Hopefully a few more people will be able to stop by next year.

While we've gotten a lot done, there is still over a full day of coding to go and we're planning on releasing the final beta of Gallery 3 really soon!

We had hundreds of responses from users in 49 countries. Did you know...

• Most users use Gallery for personal purposes (85%), 10% use Gallery for professional reasons, and 5% are developers or supporters.
• Gallery accounts come in all sizes. Users share anywhere from 3 to 350,000 photos and manage anywhere from 1 to 25,000 user accounts.
• The vast majority of Gallery users (86%) have an IT education or work in a field that requires IT skills.
• The five most important qualities in photo management software for our users are: easy to upload photos; good user interface; easy administration; speed of tasks; and easy to set photo permissions.

Check out the Full Season Of Usability 2009 Survey Results.