Last week, the first public preview of version 2 of the Yii framework was announced. Qiang and the entire team have been working very hard, and this is a great milestone to reach. The code is available on Github, and there’s a whole forum dedicated to feedback and design discussions. Input from the Yii community is actively encouraged. All that being said, understand that Yii 2 is not nearly ready for production uses yet. Many bugs will undoubtedly be found, and other changes to the framework’s design are inevitable, too.
Besides mentioning this exciting news, I also wanted to explain how I expect this impacts my self-published book on the Yii framework.
As version 2 of the framework was being developed while I was writing the book, it was always my intention to start writing the book for Yii 1, and eventually update it all for Yii 2. The question is when I make that switch. Considering that Yii 2 is not production ready, and more changes are sure to come, my current plan is to complete the first draft of the book for Yii 1. Yii 1 is what people are using now, and there’s still a lot more information that people need to be covered by the book.
I assume that it will probably be three months or so before Yii 2 is ironed out and close to being production ready. The first electronic version of “The Yii Book” will be done by then. The remaining questions will be:
- When do I do a print run of the book?
- When do I start the process of having the book translated?
In other words, will the order be:
- Complete the book for Yii 1
- Update the book for Yii 2
- Create a print version of the book (for Yii 2)
- Create translations of the book (for Yii 2)
In that scenario, no print version or translations will ever be done for the Yii 1 version of the book.
Or will the order be:
- Complete the book for Yii 1
- Create a print version of the book (for Yii 1)
- Create translations of the book (for Yii 1)
- Update the book for Yii 2
- Create a print version of the book (for Yii 2)
- Create translations of the book (for Yii 2)
I will have to wait and see how things go, but my inclination today is that the first order will be what happens. On the one hand, the book’s content for Yii 2 won’t really be finalized until about Yii 2.0.x, when most of the post-production bugs have been found and fixed. This could be Fall 2013. On the other hand, I don’t want to ask translators to translate the entire book twice, as that’s a lot of work.
So, the short version of all this is that I’m going to complete the electronic version of the book for Yii version 1 first. Then I’ll see about translations and print copies based upon where Yii 2 is at that time.
As a reminder, anyone that purchases an electronic, English-language, Yii 1 version of the book will receive the electronic, English-language, Yii 2 version for free.
