e2 Released!

August 20th, 2010

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.

Posted in Announcement

3 Responses to “e2 Released!”

  1. Jonathan Says:
    August 20th, 2010 at 4:57 pm

    Since TextMate 2 is abandonware, have you thought seriously about opening up the possibility of an OS X version?

    I know you have refused in the past, out of respect for Allan, but don’t we all know by now that competition only fuels more inspiration and better products?

    Since nothing is coming close to TextMate, Allan doesn’t feel the need to fix some glaring productivity problems. (e.g. Find in project for any decent size application, single character undo, and so on)

    I can’t blame him, it’s basically why Microsoft left IE6 untouched for years… Then mozilla came and the browser wars started and now we have a number a quality choices, not to mention all the development with HTML5.

    E can be the FireFox of text editors, open it up and you can’t even imagine the possibilities.

  2. Ionut Staicu Says:
    August 21st, 2010 at 2:15 pm

    @Jonathan: man, to be honest, after more than 6 months of silentio stampa from Alexander, I started to think that E is dead (even if AJ did a great job improving the open source edition).

    But since yesterday i believe again in the editor. So… Just have faith!

    I doubt Alexander will release an osx version. But since the editor is open sourced, i think you can try to compile on osx :D

  3. gian Says:
    August 22nd, 2010 at 12:42 pm

    Yes. E on the Mac please!!
    Textmate is getting older and less and less compatible with the new versions of the os, while E is alive and very appealing.