Although Smarty is known as a "Template Engine", it would be more accurately described as a "Template/Presentation Framework." That is, it provides the programmer and template designer with a wealth of tools to automate tasks commonly dealt with at the presentation layer of an application. I stress the word Framework because Smarty is not a simple tag-replacing template engine. Although it can be used for such a simple purpose, its focus is on quick and painless development and deployment of your application, while maintaining high-performance, scalability, security and future growth.

Here some of the more notable features of Smarty:

• Caching
• Configuration Files
• Security
• Easy to Use and Maintain
• Variable Modifiers
• Template Functions
• Filters
• Resources
• Plugins
• Debugging
• Compiling
• Performance