Stephen Lewis made two announcements yesterday (optimized into one, single blog post. Clever.): his EE1 add-ons have reached the end of life (no longer supported or updated) and–related to that–his killer add-on BucketList is now free.
We all owe Stephen a beer at his earliest convenience for putting BucketList out there for free. If you’re not near his favorite pub, maybe just pick up one of his add-ons as a way of saying thanks?
Posted on Aug 18, 2011 by Ryan Irelan
Booyant (makers of NavEE) released a new add-on today: Better Pages.
Better Pages is an ExpressionEngine fieldtype designed to make using the Pages module significantly more end-user friendly.
Well, okay. What can it do?
Better Pages is a field type that allows you to narrow down which templates apply to the channel to which you’re posting. And, in addition to that, you can assign a thumbnail to the template, so your users can select a template by look instead of just name. Very clever!
Booyant is running a “ramp-up pricing” special. The price for Better Pages starts at $1 today (May 16th 2011) and increased by one dollar each day until the end of the month. The final price of Better Pages will be $15.
Watch the video they put together to learn more about how Better Pages works.
Posted on May 16, 2011 by Ryan Irelan
Video Player 2 for ExpressionEngine 2 packs some pretty nice new features making is a snap to add videos to your entries. The latest version adds matrix support and a pretty cool new video search functionality, which searches several video sites for clips to add. You can also supply a video URL of your own.
The new version provides HTML5 video compatibility too:
The new version of Video Player now supports HTML 5 with compatible players, and makes your videos accessible from an iPhone or an iPad. You do not have any thing to do to benefit from this improvement, your existing videos will be automatically updated. HTML5 video playback from an iPhone or an iPad is currently supported by YouTube and Vimeo.
Video Player 2 costs $39 and is available at Devot:ee .
Posted on Feb 08, 2011 by Brian Warren
Not even ten months after releasing Playa 3, Pixel & Tonic announced Playa 4 with a host updates.
Playa 4 now uses the Translucent UI, a look and feel that garnered much praise when Pixel & Tonic debuted it in Matrix 2.
Under the hood there are plenty changes too, with updated converters to help transition to Playa, loads of new template tags, and, notably, the dropping of EE1 compatibility. If you’re still BFF’s with EE1 and can’t stand the thought of not buying Playa for it, not to worry: For the time being Playa 3 will be bundled with Playa 4.
Playa 4 looks downright fantastic. Check it out at Pixel & Tonic, or Devot:ee.
Posted on Feb 03, 2011 by Brian Warren
Over the weekend, DevDemon released the latest version of their Channel Images fieldtype and I have to say we here are pretty impressed with it.
Channel Images takes image management in ExpressionEngine to an entirely new level. Somehow it makes the task of uploading and working with your images both simpler, yet more powerful. I’ll try to sum up what I mean:
If you just need to upload one image with a channel entry and that’s pretty much it, well, you can get by just fine without Channel Images. However, if you’ve ever wanted to have an image gallery with an entry, or just want to upload several images, add a caption to each and move them around a bit, then Channel Images definitely deserves a look, because it makes these kinds of things a piece of cake.
If you already know what I’m talking about because you’ve used Channel Images for awhile, then you might be interested in knowing what is new with 3.0:
Channel Images is a $45 add-on, works with both EE 1.7 and 2.x, and is available at DevDemon’s own site or Devot:ee.
DevDemon: Channel Images
Channel Images on Devot:ee
Posted on Nov 30, 2010 by Brian Warren
Last week EE Insider contributor Noah Stokes ran into an issue with custom input fields in EE not allowing him to enter anything at all.
With the help of a friend (*cough* me *cough*) he remembered that he had blanked out the max length when he created those fields (no value at all) and apparently EE just makes the value 0 (instead of a usable default like 128).
Read his short write-up on it at Es Bueno: ExpressionEngine Custom Field Gotcha
(You might also be interested in Noah’s EE Insider article A Primer on Relationships in ExpressionEngine)
Posted on Nov 11, 2010 by Ryan Irelan
Biber Ltd. released a new fieldtype for EE 2: Currency Field. This field enables you to easily have a currency fieldtype in your publish form. It supports dozens of currencies (pretty much everything except Monopoly money) and you can choose whether the currency is user selectable or not.
Using the template tags, you can leverage the Google Calculator to do currency conversions while also showing the original price (see the fieldtype docs for more explanation).
Currency Field costs $4.99 US and is available now for EE 2.
Posted on Aug 23, 2010 by Ryan Irelan
Some of you may have noticed by his inquiries on Twitter over the last week that Brandon Kelly was up to something. That something was a past, present and future write-up about custom fields in ExpressionEngine.
In my book, Custom Fields are ExpressionEngine’s strongest feature. They’re right at the core of what defines EE. And they’ve been bustling with innovation lately, from the add-on community as well as EllisLab.
But I don’t think we’ve seen their full potential yet, and I think Field Groups are partly to blame.
Brandon then launches into a history of custom fields (including some great quotes from Mike Boyink, Rick Ellis and Ryan Masuga) and how we go to where we are now: custom fields, organized by groups, which are assigned to a single channel.
The future of custom fields, according to Brandon, is that custom field groups “lose relevance” and the emphasis is put on allowing you to collect different fields into a publish layout. You could pull from any of the fields in the system, freeing you from having to re-create the same fields in different custom field groups.
I’ve been chatting with Brandon about this for several days and I couldn’t agree more. While I do like to organize fields into groups because different channels may need slightly different field settings and instructions (and I reject chaos and embrace order), we shouldn’t tie all fields down into this convention. In fact, there’s almost nothing stopping someone from implementing an idea like this right now. The fields and field groups aren’t bound in the database; you can create any associations you’d like.
Read the whole article (it’s worth it, believe me): Custom Fields and the Death of the Field Group
Posted on Aug 03, 2010 by Ryan Irelan
It’s Friday and we all need to unwind after a long week of phone calls, coding and designing. Pixel & Tonic is hoping you’ll blow off the steam at their new Dive Bar. It’s a collection of small pieces of software for EE and the first batch is all stuff you can download for free.
Ever since we opened our doors – exactly 5 months ago today! – the site has been missing a key ingredient: a place to release lightweight add-ons. Add-ons that are simple enough that I couldn’t write a whole Overview page for if I tried, and have no need for public changelogs, documentation, or support links.
In the first set of goodies, you get:
Get your IDs out and don’t stay too late!
Posted on Jul 23, 2010 by Ryan Irelan
Pixel & Tonic released an updated add-on for ExpressionEngine 2 today: Matrix 2.
The updated fieldtype now support EE 2 and EE 1.6. It features a new user interface using a “translucent” theme, a File celltype, column-specific instructions and its own database table.
You can read Brandon’s blog post about it and then view my EE Insider Quick Look video on building a simple matrix table with Matrix 2 on ExpressionEngine 2.
Posted on May 04, 2010 by Ryan Irelan
Today Pixel and Tonic released Playa 3, which (drumroll, please!) now supports ExpressionEngine 2! This is an add-on that a lot of people have been waiting for before they make the jump to EE 2. Well, it’s here, so what are you waiting for?
Until the next release of the EE 2 public beta is out there is a minor code adjustment needed to get Playa 3 to work on EE 2 but that will go away with the impending release of EE 2.02.
If you’re already a license holder for Playa 2, this is a free upgrade.
More to come on Playa 3 this week!
Posted on Apr 12, 2010 by Ryan Irelan
Stephen “I spend my days creating cool stuff for you” Lewis of Experience Internet has released a very cool new fieldtype called DropDate.
DropDate is a custom fieldtype, enabling easy selection of dates in the Control Panel or Stand-Alone Entry Forms using day, month, and year drop-downs.
If you’ve been looking for a better way to input dates (especially using FF Matrix), this may be for you!
Read his announcement: Introducing DropDate : Better date selection in ExpressionEngine
Posted on Mar 17, 2010 by Ryan Irelan
Say what? New in BucketList 1.1 is the ability to choose which s3 buckets are available. From the changelog (short and sweet):
Implemented the option to specify which buckets are available for each field or FF Matrix cell.
This was one of my wishes from the beginning, so I’m really glad to see it implemented. Now I can create a “article_images” bucket and make it only available to the Articles section of the site. Very nice!
If you’re an existing license holder, like I am, you just need to enter your license key to get the update.
Read the announcement: Introducing BucketList 1.1
Posted on Mar 02, 2010 by Ryan Irelan
The popular FieldFrame fieldtype, nGen File Field, has finally reached its 1.0 release. Included in the release are bug fixes, improvements and a few new features:
- New feature: Hide existing file option
- New feature: Use/create low resolution thumbnails (lower memory usage). Found in FieldType Manager/FieldFrame settings.
- New feature: Respects upload location maximum image dimensions
- General speed/performance improvements
The new low resolution thumbnails feature is nice to see. I’ve had a few instances where the fieldtype used up the allotted PHP memory.
nGen File Field works on EE 1.6, is free and available now.
Posted on Feb 25, 2010 by Ryan Irelan
Along with the launch of his new company and website, Brandon Kelly has also snuck in a nice little surprise: Wygwam 2.0. The updated WYSIWYG editor for EE now works on both EE 1.6.x and EE 2.x. In addition, it also got a new set of threads:
We went back to the drawing board for Wygwam’s custom CKEditor skin, and came up with something that does a better job of blending into your ExpressionEngine control panel, allowing you to focus on That Which Matters Most – your content.
For those of you that are already using EE 2, Wygwam 2.0 is a free upgrade for existing license holders.
Posted on Feb 23, 2010 by Ryan Irelan
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