At long last, the Drupal Classified Ads module has reached Release Candidate status.

RC1 Releases 6.x-3.0-rc1 and 7.x-3.0-rc1 were published today and include:

• fixes for all bugs and most support requests reported on all branches of the 4.x, 5.x, 6.x and 7.x versions
• new features never yet included in Classified Ads:
  • CCK and Field API support:
    • Extra Field definition for the Ad expiration date, allowing admin-level positioning of the expiration display for all build modes
    • "Classified Ad" build mode/view mode, allowing admin-level choice of fields and formats for all fields in lists. On Drupal 7, this includes the Classified Ads fields: body, category, and expiration date
    • Classified Ads link formatter: allows automatic linking to Classified Ads taxonomy pages from any Drupal taxonomy field
  • Views support: Classified Ad expiration field handler allows specific formatting of the expiration date in Views
  • Context support: Classified Ads now includes a Context 3 condition to make it easier to build the Classified Ads section on your site with a specific layout or theme
  • Token support: available on Drupal 6 and 7, Classified Ads tokens allow customized displays and messages. On Drupal 7, this includes distinct "themed" and "raw" tokens, and the ability to use token chaining
• Notifications are now in a separate module and the all-new Classified Ads API, documented in Advanced Help for easier access, allows you to generate notifications in any way you choose, beyond the default e-mail based notifications mechanism. Privatemsg, Messaging... it's up to you. And on Drupal 6, integration of the default notifications mechanisms with the Job Queue module means the ability to send larges quantities of messages in a batch queue.