As with previous releases, Joomla! provides a unified and easy-to-use framework for delivering content for Web sites of all kinds. To support the changing nature of the Internet and emerging Web technologies, Joomla! required substantial restructuring of its core functionality and we also used this effort to simplify many challenges within the current user interface. Joomla! 1.7 has many new features.

In Joomla! 2.5, you'll notice:

• Substantially improved usability, manageability, and scalability far beyond the original Mambo foundations
• Expanded accessibility to support internationalisation, double-byte characters and right-to-left support for Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew languages among others
• Extended integration of external applications through Web services and remote authentication such as the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
• Enhanced content delivery, template and presentation capabilities to support accessibility standards and content delivery to any destination
• A more sustainable and flexible framework for Component and Extension developers
• Backward compatibility with previous releases of Components, Templates, Modules, and other Extensions