EE 2.1 Overview at CMS Wire

Travis Smith of Hop Studios posted part one of his ExpressionEngine 2.1 CMS Review article over at CMS Wire.

Discussing the new File Manager:

The file manager is sensationally powerful: it lets you upload files independently from creating entries; it lets you browse and preview items that have been uploaded, and it shows you file permissions and other file information, like when a file was uploaded. You can download and delete in bulk (but not upload in bulk).

And for images, you can now do basic editing operations — crop, resize and rotate — that were previously only available in the Photo Gallery module (more on that later).

The file manager is completely integrated with a new field type: the File field — which lets you upload or pick a file as part of a new entry. There’s no doubt that file handling is much, much easier in EE 2, and that a significant amount of thought went into the new system; in my testing, it worked fine with 10 file groups and hundreds of files.

Overall it’s a great overview of the new interface in EE 2 and the changes that were made compared to EE 1.6. He even includes a bit of history ramping up to the EE 2 release. It’s not really a review (in this part at least) but I guess the predictable snark at the beginning was a good way to keep some street cred with the Drupal crowd.

Read the whole thing yourself: ExpressionEngine 2.1 CMS Review