Over at Drupal.org a new Drupal 6 Status Update was just published. Several new changes are listed, many of them quite exciting:

1. Numerous installer improvements, including the ability to import translations for enabled modules automatically in the installer and the ability to specify numerous settings at install time (administrator (user number 1) credentials, clean URLs, timezone).
2. Automatically importing translation files for modules and themes, when installing modules or enabling themes, as well as when adding a new language.
3. Numerous usability improvements, including various installer improvements, the ability to remember anonymous comment posters, etc. It’s great to see that the mega usability thread yielded some good patches.
4. The user status module and the HTML corrector module are now in core.
5. A vastly improved file management system, which associates files with users rather than nodes, so that files can be re-used among posts and various preview bugs are taken care of.
6. A completely reworked database abstraction layer for table creation. This makes it far easier to port Drupal to other database backends, such as Oracle and SQLite.
7. A JavaScript aggregator to complement the CSS aggregator feature in Drupal 5.
8. Right-to-left (RTL) CSS files for built-in modules, so themes supporting right-to-left displays can work easily with Drupal 6. RTL CSS support for some built-in themes is already done.

Because a lot of the changes are just now coming in late and fast, Dries Buytaert has decided to push the freeze date to July 1st, which means a little longer before betas, but hopefully well worth it.