Built on CodeIgniter

Lauded for its speed, flexibility, and ease of use, CodeIgniter has become the application framework of choice for many of the premiere PHP developers in the world. Why? Because CodeIgniter lets developers get more done in less time. Don't take our word for it, ask the creator of PHP, Rasmus Lerdorf, who praised CodeIgniter for being "faster, lighter and the least like a framework". What does this mean for ExpressionEngine? It means you'll be able to use ExpressionEngine in ways that simply were not possible before. Plus, we've just added an enormous pool of talented PHP developers to the ExpressionEngine community!

A Beautiful New Interface

The ExpressionEngine control panel has been redesigned to make your experience and workflow faster, more intuitive, efficient, and better organized for more control. ExpressionEngine ships with several new Control Panel themes, from serious, to whimsical, to a mobile theme optimized for iPhone.

File Manager with Image Editor

ExpressionEngine 2.0 now features a incredibly powerful and intuitive file and asset manager that can be used from within the publishing interface or on its own. The new file manager includes the ability to crop, resize, and rotate your images directly in the Control Panel.

Improved Template Tools

ExpressionEngine's incredibly powerful template engine is one of the many reasons why web designers love ExpressionEngine. ExpressionEngine 2.0 adds great new tools that make managing, creating, auto-detecting, synchronizing, and working with file-based templates better than ever. Tag validation will even notify you if a bad tag was used, or if a module needed for a tag is not installed. The template engine has a great new feature called Snippets, that allows you to define dynamic information once, and use it all over your site.

Accessories

Accessories allow you to incorporate your own information into the control panel. Virtually anything can be displayed in an Accessory tab, including video, data pulled from the database, or information from off-site. If you develop websites for clients, you'll be able to add personalized information for them in the control panel. Even if you have no skill with PHP, you will be able to create Accessories for your clients.

Customizable Publish Page Layouts and Field Types

Ever want to change how your data entry fields appear in the Publish page? Now you can, simply by dragging and dropping them where you want them. Layouts can be saved, assigned to group members, and recalled as needed.

ExpressionEngine's already powerful data modeling features have been improved, with support for upload, checkbox, radio, and multi-select field types. Unleash your data potential!

Write Mode

Content publishers will rejoice at ExpressionEngine's new Write Mode, which creates an uncluttered full-browser writing environment. Using a web browser to write content has always been difficult. ExpressionEngine's Write Mode seeks to change this, by giving you an interface that works more like a text editor.

Custom Field API

Perhaps you need a field letting you pick from a location on a map, or your content authors need to enter tabular data? Developers can now create their own custom field types which can be used in any channel for these tasks or anything else that can be imagined.

Packages

ExpressionEngine 2.0 introduces packages for third-party add-ons, enabling all assets to be managed and updated much more simply, and making it easier to create complex add-ons with many components.

jQuery by default

jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript, and ExpressionEngine supports it natively. Add-on developers can take advantage of it in the control panel, and you can even use it in your templates for event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development.

And more!

Numerous new features and enhancements are part of ExpressionEngine 2.0, from new security features, more control during the installation process, contextual help menus, improved member profile pages that use the main template engine, to entry auto-saving, so you'll never lose your work. You can check out the ExpressionEngine 2.0 Changelog for a complete list!