Feature Requests - a Developer’s Eye View

Making up about 12% of the topics in our licensed support forums, the Feature Request forum is one of the busiest on the site.  And a perusal of the over 600 features added in ExpressionEngine’s lifetime compared to the topics in the Feature Request forum reveals that we are quite responsive to user requests.

But ExpressionEngine is not a raft floating on the sea of the ...

ExpressionEngine 2.0: fully CodeIgnited!

At South by Southwest during our “ExpressionEngine 2.0 sneak preview” I got a chance to reveal some big news about the future of ExpressionEngine that I wanted to explore in some more detail here for anyone who wasn’t able to attend.

ExpressionEngine 2.0 is built on CodeIgniter.

CodeIgniter is our Open Source PHP based framework.  You can learn more at CodeIgniter.com, but ...

A Haystack in a Needle

Have you ever done that before?  Looked for a haystack in a needle?  It’s quite difficult, as one might imagine, as typically you do not find large haystacks within tiny needles.  One might say it was a waste of time, and indeed one would be right.

PHP is picky about its grammar and when you might want to say, “PHP, is this needle in this haystack?” PHP would prefer that you ...

Looking for What Is

We try to train users to rely on the ExpressionEngine User Guide, so they can see what’s available to them, how to use tags and variables, and so on.  We strongly feel that third parties have a responsibility to document their own add-ons with the same goals for their users, and with no less importance placed on the quality of documentation.

To that end, we are now openly ...

Questions Concerning ExpressionEngine 2.0 Compatibility

We have gotten a few third party developers asking about compatibility of their current Add-Ons with ExpressionEngine 2.0, so I am going to answer some of your questions as completely as I can at this point in time.

Will there be a Developer preview of ExpressionEngine 2.0 before the final release?

Yes, this is something we intend to do so as to allow developers the time ...

Fresh Variables

Perhaps you’ve wanted global variables that you could use in tag parameters or conditionals, but do not have or desire to use FTP to create path.php global variables.  Or maybe path.php variables are fine, but you need them to hold ExpressionEngine tags or even PHP.  Or you need admins to have access to modify the variables, but don’t want them to have access to the ...

Minimalism

Art students would probably chastise me for even applying this label at all, much less applying it in what it most certainly not accurately following the “minimalism” movement.  But for me it fits, and since in this case I’m the artist, isn’t that all that matters?  I see your snobbery and raise you two aloofs!