I'm happy to announce that Custom Formatters 1.3 is now available for download.

The primary changes this time around are:

• Previews
  See live previews of your formatters during creation.
• API Hooks
  Developers can now improve support between their modules CCK field and the Custom Formatters module.
• More tokens
  Per request, I've added some much needed tokens to Custom Formatters to help with the creation of formatters.

Read on for more information.

When I first released the Custom Formatters module I was sure I had made the task of creating a CCK Formatter easy, but instead I had only made it easier. It turns out I was looking at the module from the perspective of a developer with a sound knowledge of PHP and the Drupal API, not from the perspective of a user with only basic HTML knowledge, so with this new (likely short term) view on module development, I give you Custom Formatters 1.2.

I just can't help myself, whenever I get an idea for a Drupal module stuck in my head, especially one that makes so much sense, I just have to write it.

Only a few days ago I got a feature request for my Drag'n'Drop Uploads (DnDU) module that I instantly dismissed. The user wanted the ability to modify the templates for the output that gets injected into a Textarea upon a successful Drag'n'Drop upload; While the idea had merit, DnDU takes advantage of the CCK/Field Formatters functionality, not defining the templates nor the template system itself.

My original opinion was for the user to simply write their own formatter inside of a custom module, as that is what I would do in that situation, but after I gave it a bit more thought I decided that the ability to write your own custom formatters inside of the Drupal back-end would not only be quite useful, it would also be quite easy to write... so I did.

Being notorious for my constant development builds with stable releases few and far between, and with so many ideas to play with, I decided that the best course of action would be to put Drag'n'Drop Uploads into a beta cycle.

And while I'm at it, how about a quick video to show off the new beta release: