I'm preparing a talk for JoomlaDay NYC on Alternative Layouts and Custom Menu Item Types. There had been so many posts on the joomla.org forum about these new capabilites of Joomla 1.6 and 1.7, and so many were complaining that the "feature" simply didn't work, I was getting a bit worried about the presentation. I had proved them working back in the spring for a presenation at Joomla Day New England, but had things changed in the subsequent versions?
Finally last week I had a chance to put them all through their paces and the good news is that Alternative Layouts and Custom Menu Item Types DO indeed work -- for all kinds of Joomla items: articles, contacts, weblinks, and category displays like blogs and lists.
The ONE Joomla entity where my template overrides (which worked) could not be turned into Alternative Layouts OR Custom Menu Item Types was the com_content layout for Categories.