There certainly have been enough changes in 3.2 to warrant a beta test, but I haven't yet decided if there will be one.
but as a webdesigner I'm really interested in trying out the new HTML based layout editor
Just to clarify, there isn't a new
editor. In fact, I have specifically omitted an editor because I don't want to spend a lot of time getting
that right. There are plenty of editors out there that do a good job - a much better job than I could probably incorporate in fact. What is new is a type of layout screen. The current screen type is a collection of rows, columns, and cells. The new screen type will be simply "HTML". You can either specify the HTML that makes up the screen directly, or a path to an HTML file. That means you should be able to create a screen that looks pretty much any way you like - without the restrictions of the columns and rows and cells that make up a TD layout screen today. There are some limitations to this method, of course. There's no scripting, so no jQuery or Yahoo javascript library (YUI). And no "conditions" so you can't change parts of the screen based on what's happening in your tournament.
Anyway, I know you probably already understand what the new feature is (and that it isn't actually an editor), but I wanted to clear it up for anyone else reading this thread.