I finally got to install the new 5.0 beta1 of Drupal, today.

I have not played with it enough to get a full impression but there are several nice things that strike immediately:

• Smart and nice, web-based installation script.
• New, beautiful, highly ergonomic and very clean, amazingly appealing default theme - Themetastic. AND IT IS LIQUID! I can not help admiring how good this theme is. Especially since I have, myself, participated in the creation of default themes for several portal and other content-management systems and I know very well what a tough job it is.
• Revamped Admin panel looks much better than in previous version. In addition, it\’s separate from main site\’s template which is very good - no need to fit to into one. I still like Google control panel (as featured in Gmail, for example) approach more but I can not ignore the fact that not only Drupal\’s new panel looks better it\’s much more intelligent, as well. I was pleasantly surprised by a collection of guiding alerts and messages. These messages look pretty, too, by the way.

Overall - great job! I am very excited with Drupal 5, personally and look forward to using it in production.