e has had a major makeover for version 2.0 and there are not only lots of new features, it builds an entirely new base for future expansion.

New features in this release include:

• Command Mode
  e2 introduces a powerful new command mode, that allows you to do quick navigation and transformation of the text with just a few key presses. It is not just a copy of vi’s command-mode, even though that was the main inspiration. It integrates it with structural regular expressions and TextMates scope awareness, ending up with at far more powerful and coherent interface.

• Macros
  You can now record macros for quick automation of repeated actions. You can also save these macros as bundle commands and assign them shortcuts to adapt the editor to your common tasks. This also means that the most of the macros in the bundles from Textmate now works.

• Language independent API
  The new api allows e to be automated from any language. This can be used in bundle commands for much more advanced and fine-grained extension of the editor. Currently the interface is only defined for python, but more languages are coming.

• Zen Coding bundle
  Zen Coding is an editor plugin for high-speed HTML, XML, XSL (or any other structured code format) coding and editing. The core of this plugin is a powerful abbreviation engine which allows you to expand expressions—similar to CSS selectors—into HTML code. Check out what it is capable of here.

• Preview of external webpages
  You can now pin the web preview to external web pages, where it will live update every time you save your documents. This means that you can now preview not only static html pages but also pages which contain templates or are otherwise preproceessed by the server.

• Lots of performance improvements and bugfixes.

All these new features will be described in much more detail over the next few days. So keep an eye on the blog.

This 2.0 release is a free update for all users that have bought their license within a year. Users with older licenses can buy a discounted update here.