Back in the Android 2.3 Gingerbread and CM7 days, the CM team introduced Power Widgets, inspired from TouchWIZ as seen on the Galaxy S. Power Widgets quickly became one of the favourite features of CM followers, and and since then have been ported to all the versions of CyanogenMod, even in Android 4.2, which came with Quick Settings.
Today, the CM team announced the death of Power widgets, and will be replacing it with a new Quick access ribbon. This new method will not only be efficient and faster, but also sleeker with only 370 lines of code vs. 3000+ lines for Power toggles. Quick access ribbon will take the existing layout of your Quick Settings, and show it as a replacement for Power toggles. This new method will be faster, and will allow users to benefit from the dynamic capabilities of the Quick Settings tiles (Eg a camera tile tile).
The CyanogenMod team has not added this feature to the nightlies yet, but plans on adding it soon. On user feedback, the CyanogenMod team has also made the Quick Access ribbon tiles and layout completely configurable as well. Expect Quick access ribbon to show up in CM nightlies over the next few days.