Drupal 7 alpha is here! Hip-hip-hoo......yawn.

So the Drupal 7 Alpha landed a couple of weeks ago and I have had a chance to install it and tinker.

Initial reaction? "Okaaaay."

Now, I came into Drupal with version 6 so I actually don't have that historical investment and developer awe that long-in-the-tooth Drupalers and Drupal developers have. So what Drupal 7 looks like to me is. . . Drupal 6 with the must have modules installed and integrated.

It's like instead of getting a bike in box that you have to assemble yourself (and order some parts from a couple of other stores),as you did with Druapal 6, you're getting most of the bike already assembled in Druapal 7.

However, the instructions on how to ride are still scribbled barely legibly on a napkin taped to the inside of the box.

The biggest difference on the interface side are the pop-up menus for the various tasks(adding content, changing themes, enabling modules, etc.).

Do I see anything that breaks barriers to 'novice' Drupal installers or users? Eh, maybe a few but not many that extend beyond what one could find on a Drupal 6 site tricked out with the proper modules.

Most definitely here are huge advantages to having CCK (Content Construction Kit) and a few other modules integrated in to Drupal 7 Core from both developer and site maintainer perspectives but I think that Drupal 7, from a user perspective, is more like a Drupal 6.5.

Drupal 7 is like a European carmaker that finally decided to put decent cupholders in cars that it sells in America; it's a nice and obvious addition that derserves modest praise but not a parade nor the sounds of Fanfare for the Common Man playing in the background as you install it.

That said, adding cupholders to an existing car interior style is no small feat and does require a lot of thoughtful time and work (no really it does) and that work is applauded.

Think of Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 as iPhone3G to iPhone3GS but not quite Windows Vista to Windows 7.

Drupal 7 embraces the right steps in the evolution of Drupal as an appropriately dominant (open source) content management system, just not steps in the direction of mainstream users (a la squarespace) but that's not necessarily a bad thing in the least.