I finally got a chance to read the entire thread! Its exciting to finally have a chance to see ANYTHING of EE2.0. The new interface is a lot better but I have to agree with those who say that the whole look feels very “non-pro?”. Don’t get me wrong.. the whole position and layout is simply perfect, i’m just skepticall about the colors and big headers. Other than that I stoked about these new events!

One thing I still haven’t heard anything about is pertaining to a file manager for this new version. Will EE2.0 include something to manage files, their descriptions, locations, permissions, etc.?? That’s the only thing I could really say I would want for 2.0

I’m very sleep deprived and the alarm is going off in five hours so I need to make this brief…

Regarding the CP design:  A major goal of the 2.0 CP (beyond the biggest goal of making the CP much more user friendly) was to enable much more customization of the look. The current 1.x version only allows CSS changes, limiting the degree to which changes can take place.  2.0 will allow total customization, since most of the markup is now in HTML files.  We intend to offer at least two or three default themes, with one being more conservative and business-like, and I have no doubt that within a short time of release, many community members will create their own looks.

Later this week once we’re all home we will be unveiling an area of our site that will give people a lot more info, including a video screencast and answers to many of the questions people have been asking.

It’s great to hear that Rick. CP customization is something we are all excited about! All other platforms don’t offer flexibility in this way and EE2.0 having it is incredible news. Congrats on the excellent product you have been working on for so long.. it’s simply amazing!

As Rick already mentioned and we’ve promised before, we’re going to make all the information we talked about here public as soon as we can.

We leave for home at 5:45am so I suppose I should get to sleep but I’m hoping we can get the stuff up by Tuesday or Wednesday of this week.

One thing I want to point out is that late last year we publicly stated that we were going to start being more open about what we were doing, etc… and I hope that our showing at SXSW makes it more obvious that we’re sticking to that commitment. We made this clear in the Q&A;here at SXSW.

Speaking of which, SXSW is supposed to release podcast style recordings of all the panels, including ours, and we’ll link those as soon as they are available. Also, Andru from Gear Live recorded a couple of the sessions on his very beautiful HD Video camera and I believe he plans to release those as well (though I don’t know for sure).

About the release date.... Its not April 1st. This was addressed in the Q & A Panel and the honest answer is that there isn’t a release date and I want to be clear about this.

Its not that we have one that we’re keeping secret, its that the way we develop involves a total lack of release dates. We, honest to God, do not have a release date, even internally. Its simply not how we work. For those of you have concerns with this, my reply is that our system of development has produced one of the best web publishing systems on the planet and not having release dates and roadmaps is part of the price we all pay for that. We think its worth it.

That being said, it obviously behooves us to get this sucker out as fast as possible and if we didn’t think we could deliver in a reasonable amount of time we’d never have shown 2.0. As others have point out in this thread that would be very stupid of us to do that. At some point in the near future we will do our best to give a general time frame along with more information. We’ll do our best to not leave you in the dark, pull as little surprises on people as possible, and make this whole process as pleasant as possible while still giving space and respect to our development process and the private logistics involved in releasing a major web application.

Leslie Camacho - 10 March 2008 12:09 AM

As Rick already mentioned and we’ve promised before, we’re going to make all the information we talked about here public as soon as we can.

Excellent! Videos would be very much appreciated. Can’t wait to see what you were all up to out there

Leslie Camacho - 10 March 2008 12:09 AM

For those of you have concerns with this, my reply is that our system of development has produced one of the best web publishing systems on the planet and not having release dates and roadmaps is part of the price we all pay for that. We think its worth it.

I have to say that I think this is one of the most truthful paragraphs I have ever read in my entire life. My hat goes off to such a fantastic team of coders and support staff who have definitely made the absolute best publishing system this side of the Milky Way!

Thanks to all of you for even giving us what we have now as I’m sure there must have been many hundreds of sleepless nights in creating the V1 branch of EE.

You are all fantastic and I am sure that we will all be blown away when we get to see 2.0.

You all go and take a rest now, you deserve it.

Best wishes,

Mark

Congratulations to EllisLab—and indeed to all of us users—on this ambitious and wise strategy of making EE2 a CI application.

Very welcome answers, from Rick and Leslie, in different styles as appropriate.

Thank you, and to the Ellis Labs team.  EE 2.0 definitely looks on a good path, and you see that we are all looking forward.

Sleep deprivation deserves catchup, and so does extraordinary effort.  See you when you surface.

Kind regards,
Clive

Can’t wait - looks excellent

[well - guess I can]

one small hope - that category selection in entries will use Cocaholics good idea!

Derek Allard - 08 March 2008 02:40 PM

Hey Guys, some official images.

http://www.derekallard.com/blog/post/expressionengine-20-official-screenshots/

First thing not a developer just my 2 cents from a client usability perspective

Having quite a bit of experience with small business websites over the years, and watching / supporting people trying to use (struggling unless I provided a lot of support!) various CMS’, the complicated look of the EE interface concerned me a little for “ease of use” for clients. These screen shots make me a feel a lot better about that aspect of EE - the interface usability-wise is 100% better. And I’m sure you developer folk will be able to tinker under the hood to implement any tweaks you so desire

So from a non-developer type who just sells websites to small business owners, initially I’m impressed with the new interface from the screengrabs.

Anyway big test will be when clients start using it

This looks to be a very positive step forward for EE and I can’t wait to get my grubby mitts on a copy. I share some of the concerns of previous posters but it sounds as though it’ll be a breeze to resolve UI concerns even if they don’t go away before release.

The additional controls look promising. I would love it if EE 2.0 made it possible for me to ditch TinyMCE and its add-ons forever.

I once choose pMachine because of its slogan ‘Publish your universe.’ Later I migrated to EE and it has been a great joy ever since, but ‘publish your universe’ became too narrow a term. At the same time I grew weary of the technophilia of Web 2.0 and wanted a web with content again. I couldn’t be more happy when I read Rick’s short bio and his vision of creating a ‘meaningful web.’ So, I’m confident that the merging of CI and EE will enable a more meaningful web and I stay, hoping that ‘meaningful’ means about the same to the two of us.

Concerning the UI of EE 2.0, I remember some research done on web design where the conclusion was that women prefer rounded forms and pastels, men square forms and subdued colours such as dark blue, you can think about that all you men out there who have issues with Veerle’s design. I find the light orange and green quite joyous and creative. But, it’s the structure of the CP that is most important and it seems to be highly improved - content managment in one place, member management in another and separated from the admin area and so on.

Extensive customizability of the Control Panel—Will we really template it like any other EE page? Cool—is really exciting news, and something I had been hoping to hear from the crew with this 2.0 release. Imagine how much other hot stuff awaits us.

I hope this has not been asked and answered already but for anyone there or the EE staff is there any hint of LDAP integration in the 2.0 release? Thanks for your time.

dhunwick73 - 10 March 2008 08:05 AM

I hope this has not been asked and answered already but for anyone there or the EE staff is there any hint of LDAP integration in the 2.0 release? Thanks for your time.

My guess is no but with CI you could get it done now.

Rick Ellis - 09 March 2008 11:13 PM

Regarding the CP design:  A major goal of the 2.0 CP (beyond the biggest goal of making the CP much more user friendly) was to enable much more customization of the look. The current 1.x version only allows CSS changes, limiting the degree to which changes can take place.  2.0 will allow total customization, since most of the markup is now in HTML files.  We intend to offer at least two or three default themes, with one being more conservative and business-like, and I have no doubt that within a short time of release, many community members will create their own looks.

That’s perfect. UI wise, that’s a great move and makes EE even that much more flexible.

Rick Ellis - 09 March 2008 11:13 PM

Later this week once we’re all home we will be unveiling an area of our site that will give people a lot more info, including a video screencast and answers to many of the questions people have been asking.

Can’t wait for this! I hope you guys cover in much more detail the integration between CI and EE. Also it would be great to see what’s involved in creating new themes for the CP.

Thanks EllisLab for all your hard work on this. It’s nice to see it’s just around the corner now.

This all sounds great to me especially the commerce part - I was expecting to have to wait 12 months after release for that and the suggestions are that I will not which is great. One thing I hope you have considered for 2 is the way upgrades take place. I am a long time user of Invision Power Forums and their upgrade system is quite superb - you upload a package and it goes through an automated update routine. Essential to this was splitting off the additional non standard modules, extensions and plug-ins to their own directory but the biggest saving would be in support time. With v1.x its very easy to get the upgrade wrong or half done or something missed and I can imagine the amount of support posts will drop. As for the v2 release dates - I fully agree with the line Ellis labs are taking on this. I will update my clients sites to v2 only when I am fully conversant with v2 and that could take months. So any new projects I take on this year will be on 1.x. (apart from my own site but I don’t mind screwing that up!)

Aha! Collection!

@Carlo: Agreed! While it is nice to have the page-based uploads, I want site or enterprise level media/file management. I want to be able to upload YUI & Blueprint files, or template images through the interface, rather than having to FTP into a directory. I also want to be able to upload template files, rather than having to copy and paste into a blank one (ie: upload a file based CSS for use, rather than copying and pasting it).

Carlo - 09 March 2008 11:22 PM

It’s great to hear that Rick. CP customization is something we are all excited about! All other platforms don’t offer flexibility in this way and EE2.0 having it is incredible news. Congrats on the excellent product you have been working on for so long.. it’s simply amazing!