Announcing NGS Beta 2!

I’m pleased to announce that we’ve finished hacking on NGS Beta 2! The test server is updated with the beta 2 source code and a fresh data dump (20100616 complete with 119,000 old edits migrated).

To play with NGS Beta 2, head over to the test server and log in with your normal MusicBrainz username/password. If you find any probems, please enter a bug report in our bug tracker. To see the complete list of issues that have been resolved for Beta 2, see this rather long list.

Oliver says:

Here’s a brief summary of my changes:

• Edit migration – old historic edits are now migrated, along with votes. Edit notes are not yet migrated, though work has begun in this area
• Many bug fixes from beta 1, including improved error handling
• A few more possible edits, including removing PUIDs and adding/deleting ISRCs from recordings
• Case change edits are now auto-edits
• Aliases now have a ‘locale’ field
• Annotations can be previewed before submit

It’s hard to summarize the apparent 160 issues in JIRA though, but these stand out at least.

Warp says:

Completely new release editor, not quite finished but it should give you a good feel of how the final version will work.

Some big changes to /ws/2, see the new specification.

Non-latin names are now properly sorted.

Green tagger icons

Ratings can be cleared.

Lots of data display fixes and tweaks.

Both Oliver and Warp have been working hard to meet this deadline, and I’m pleased that they’ve completed this important milestone! Many thanks to Oliver, Warp, Nikki, Navap, Ijabz, Murdos and anyone else who had a hand in working on beta 2. I would also like to thank Alisa Lemberg specifically for her efforts in helping Warp, Navap and myself redesign the release editor. Alisa’s UX experience helped us focus our efforts and finally deliver a solid release editor. Without her we’d still be guessing the right approach to take for creating a usable release editor.

Happy Testing!