Better Exposed Filters turns 1.0

Finally, a much delayed “official” release of the Better Exposed Filters module has been posted on drupal.org.  Regardless of the beta/dev designation since it’s introduction six months ago, BEF is already in use on about 1200 Web sites.  I had hoped to get this release out before DrupalConSF, but kinda blew it…

Turns out, it’s all for the better!  Thanks to dereine and dagmar, I was able to get the upcoming Views 3.x fully supported in this release (Views 3.x-Alpha-3 as of this writing).  At some part I’ll need to branch the code as the Views 2.x and 3.x functionality is done completely differently, but for now everything lives happily in one house.

I’ve also started a handbook page to describes some recipes for  improving the user experience of exposed filters.

• Styling optgroups (optgroups allow limited hierarchical display in select elements)
• Taming long lists of options with scrollable div’s
• Make your site oh-so-Web-2.0 with AJAX-based instant search results
• Turn those “in between” or “greater/less than” numeric filters into something more visually interesting by incorporating the jQuery Slider widget

It’s official, Better Exposed Filters is 1.0!