Richard Haeser
This blog post was originally posted on richardhaeser.com. It is published at typo3.org with permission from the author.
Current situation
In December, After testing the dashboard as a separate third party extension for a while, we decided that it was time to work on the patch to implement the dashboard as a new core extension. The dashboard initiative worked hard to get the patch done. Some small changes have been made and the code was cleaned up. At this moment, the patch is in the last of review stage and is about to get merged. A moment we’ve been waiting for for a long time.
This first patch contains the Dashboard module in the backend, the API to create your own widgets and some simple widgets. As this is the minimal viable product we defined, it should make it to the LTS release. With this version, everyone should be able to create their own widgets and backend users can create their own dashboard and add widgets to it.
Are We Ready Yet?
That is an easy one: no, we are not! Before the feature freeze for TYPO3 CMS v10 starts, we will work on several small features. Those features are mainly new widget types and new widgets. We would like to make it as easy as possible for developers to add their widgets. A graph widget type is already finished and will be pushed as soon as the main dashboard patch is merged. We will also try to add some widgets with information from core extensions. As we can’t promise which widgets will make it on time, I will not go in detail about this.
When the feature freeze has come, we will focus on helping extension developers to create their own widgets. We will do that by writing proper documentation, but also by creating examples. For my own extensions like the PageSpeed Insights extension and the Yoast SEO for TYPO3 extension, I will create the widgets myself. I will also visit TYPO3 camps and propose sessions on how to write your own widgets.
And of course we will try to fix bugs as fast as possible!
