The TYPO3 community is pleased to announce the latest version of TYPO3 CMS. The available version 7.4 serves as another intermediate step towards the next LTS version TYPO3 CMS 7 which will be released in fall 2015.
Since the release of TYPO3 CMS 7.3 in June, over 100 contributors joined the development to shape up this big release. During the TYPO3 Developer Days 2015 in Nuremberg, a lot of the milestones targeted for the Long Term Support version have been finished with many newcomers joining forces to make CMS7 a strong release.
7.4 thus combines a lot of last and missing pieces in several areas of TYPO3 and marks one last turning point for the finalization of the LTS version.
Streamlining the UI with avatars and consistent components
Backend users can now upload and choose an avatar image that is displayed in various areas of the TYPO3 Backend, giving a more personal feel to all the places editors interact with each other. It is also possible to see other Backend users who are logged in currently in the system.
Popup notifications and decisions boxes are streamlined and rephrased, embedding much better into the User Interface.
Several records like content elements now have a “description” field that is only shown in the TYPO3 Backend. Those can be used by editors for taking notes and storing additional information and are meant as a helper for collaboration. Display of this information is for instance integrated to the list module.
Most rendering of nested structures with trees are now streamlined to have the same look & feel.
Improved file uploading
A big wish for editors finally came true: Uploading files via drag & drop is now heavily improved. The system now recognizes naming collisions before a file is uploaded and pops up a new interface to let the user decide whether existing files should be overwritten, skipped or renamed. Managing assets has never been easier.
Editing forms with required fields
Notifying editors of wrong or missing data in edit fields did not work correctly in many use cases. The exclamation mark images were notoriously misplaced or validation did not work at all. The underlying code was rewritten from scratch, is now much more stable and reliable. The look & feel has been adapted to the style of the new TYPO3 Backend, usability is improved and notifications are much better visible.
For the developers who set up new projects, the composer structure under the hood is now simplified and streamlined. See the <link https: wiki.typo3.org composer>wiki for more details.
Various tools for setting up the template and the Backend with TYPO3 have been added: A “Backend Layout Provider” based on PageTSconfig is loaded by default. Users who have used the “Bootstrap Package” know a similar logic already.
For integrators the TYPO3 Core now delivers some additions to templates based on Fluid, which allows to send data to a processor that can manipulate the data (e.g. resolving FAL relations) and send back the processed data to the Fluid template. See the “DataProvider” section in the Wiki for more details.
The Admin Panel in the frontend has been adapted to match the look & feel of the TYPO3 Backend.
At last, a lot of useful TypoScript options have been added, some have been activated by default, and obsolete options have been removed.
Technologies under the hood
And now for the real technical parts - the Geek-savvy framework-depending changes.
On the JavaScript side, Prototype.js, script.acul.ous and ExtCore have been completely removed. All JavaScript code that was dependent on these frameworks has been migrated to use <link http: jquery.com>jQuery and <link http: requirejs.org>RequireJS. This is part of the effort to streamline the JavaScript code shipped with the core, and unify the JavaScript frameworks in use to improve not only the extensibility but also the performance on the client side.
The PHP logic under the hood has seen drastic changes: TYPO3 7.4 is the first Open Source Content Management System which uses the newly introduced <link http: www.php-fig.org psr psr-7>PSR-7 standard, which allows for a proper Request/Response logic known from other standalone PHP frameworks. All entry points have been unified to use a clean Application class, so that no PHP code is called in the global scope. The TYPO3 Backend now only uses typo3/index.php for calling anything (AJAX Requests, Backend Modules, etc) with a flexible Request Handling API.
All resources which were previously placed somewhere inside the typo3/ folder have been unified to be put in the according system extension. This marks a huge step towards working with other components in the PHP world. Additionally as a best practice for all extensions shipped with the core have the same folder structure.
Translations
Xavier Perseguers has reworked the translation server, the central place for translating TYPO3 in different versions. This work is finally finished and live, meaning that it is now possible to start translating TYPO3 for version 7. Everybody is encouraged to start translating now. See the <link record:tt_news:1952>separate news announcement for more details.
As a side effect, the footprint of fetching translations into a TYPO3 v7 system has become incredibly fast.
Get it
Feel free to try it out. There are several ways to see TYPO3 in action. You can find the package on our <link>download page, or check out <link http: get.typo3.org>get.typo3.org. Check out the introduction package to get started.
If you don’t have a server at hand, you can play around with a live public demo at <link http: cms-next.demo.typo3.org>cms-next.demo.typo3.org - see <link http: demo.typo3.org>demo.typo3.org for instructions on how to log in.
Outlook
The next version is targeted for September 29th, which will see another great enhancement for Integrators: Default Content Elements based on our beloved Templating Engine Fluid, which will replace the well-known CSS Styled Content with a simpler API to get started with new projects built with TYPO3. Rest assured that this will not be the only big change coming to v7.
If you want to get in touch with the development, feel free to contact <link>me or <link>Mathias Schreiber, and join us on <link https: forger.typo3.org slack>Slack at the #typo3-core-dev channel.
