The new Yii 1.1.4 contains numerous improvements. One that I wasn't clear on from the changelog was the line saying "automatic action parameter binding" for $_GET values. This is a very subtle way of saying that they've made it much easier to handle some of the 'grunt work' for actions that work with multiple $_GET variables.
http://www.yiiframework.com/doc/guide/basics.controller#action-parameter-binding
Quite simply pass in the name of the $_GET variables to the controller action method as parameters, including any default value you would like applied if they did not specify a value.
Easily looked over, but very nice addition to the framework!!