This Week in TYPO3 (Week 28, 2014)

Week ending July 11

Flow/Neos

Neos code sprint and release of Neos 1.1

Aske Ertmann, release manager of TYPO3 Neos 1.2 reports on the <link http: neos.typo3.org news code-sprint-june-2014.html>Neos Code Sprint June 2014 on the Neos website. The three days focused on improving the tools, communication, discussing organizational matters, working on upcoming features, which ultimately resulted in the release of Neos 1.1 just before the start of the Dutch Developer Days. The team set up two email addresses for <link to the neos>Neos and <link to the flow>Flow that go directly to a service desk implemented in Jira. Jira is also set up as <link https: jira.typo3.org browse neos>issue tracker for Flow and Neos. <link https: www.atlassian.com software jira>Jira by Atlassian is not an Open Source solution, but Open Source projects do get a free license. Jira is also a tool that is quite commonly used amongst TYPO3 companies. From the organisational side release management was tackled and plans initiated to migrate <link http: flow.typo3.org>flow.typo3.org to the same style as <link http: neos.typo3.org>neos.typo3.org uses. The team could use some help migrating this website. There are still two code sprints coming up this year and as always the team welcomes new contributors to their code sprints with one simple rule being that you have some Neos experience and can mostly work on your own. Especially contributors with frontend knowledge (JavaScript, CSS) are needed. Contact the Neos team by <link the neos>email to get more info on what you can do.

The Neos Team Needs More Help

Rasmus Skjoldan, UX planner & designer for the Neos team, <link http: rasmusskjoldan.com post agencies-of-the-world-the-neos-team-needs-more-help>writes on his personal blog about how much time he and the people at his company <link https: moc.net>MOC spend on Neos work. Rasmus explains how the Neos team needs more resources to continue to advance Neos fast enough and make it the great CMS platform for agencies. Help is needed  in area's such as documentation, reviewing, testing, marketing, the Neos website, social, evangelising – and yes, development. If you want to help out you can leave a comment to Rasmus's article or send a <link the neos>mail.

Events

Codesprints

On code sprints

Anja Leichsenring writes on '<link http: typo3.helmut-hummel.de>doc_core_insight' about '<link http: typo3.helmut-hummel.de post a-different-typo3-cms-core-development-codesprint>A (different) TYPO3 CMS Core Development Codesprint'. In the article Anja gives some insight into code sprints on general and specifically on the <link http: wiki.typo3.org cms_codesprint_2014>Bremen code sprint. The article concludes with: "A codesprint is about coding, but it is no closed event. You are a developer, interested in improving the inner workings of TYPO3 CMS and willing to spend a few days? We are happy to meet new people. Have a look at typo3.org for <link http: typo3.org events code-sprints>a list of all the sprints we do, where and when and to what topic. Pick one, list yourself as a participant, and maybe we will meet.'

TYPO3 CMS (July 24 – 27, Stuttgart, Germany)

Anja Leichsenring takes on the organisation of already the <link http: wiki.typo3.org cms_codesprint_2014>fifth code sprint this year for TYPO3 CMS, which will be held at the <link http: www.cron.eu>cron.it office in Stuttgart.

Community Tools (July 24 – 27, Wiesbaden, Germany)

Christian Zenker takes the lead in organising the <link http: wiki.typo3.org>second code sprint this year for typo3.org and community tools. The code sprint will be hosted by <link http: aoe.com>AOE in Wiesbaden. One of the things on top of the list of this sprint is an update to TYPO3 CMS 6.2. Some preparations have already been done at the first sprint and the aim is to do the actual migration in October of this year.

T3DUST (September 20 - 27, Festenburg, Upper Harz, Germany)

Joey Hasenau announced <link https: www.facebook.com events>T3DUST (TYPO3 Distributions, Usability Solutions and Themes) in the beginning of this year already and has a budget allocation from the <link http: association.typo3.org expert-advisory-board>EAB to enable the organisation. T3DUST is based on the very successful formula of the User eXperience Week, <link http: t3uxw09.typo3.org>T3UWX09, organised by Jens Hoffman back in 2009. T3UXW09 was a week full of creative chaos and team spirit where lots of great ideas have been created, which pushed the experience for TYPO3 users to a new level. In this same spirit T3DUST will be organised. With the arrival of NEOS in the TYPO3 family, there is the need for a shift of the mindset from today's methods to the new and modern ways of content management. There is also a good opportunity to increase the user base of TYPO3 CMS with specific distributions. Distributions is a key feature of TYPO3 6.2 LTS and the upcoming THEME packages, but until now not well-known. T3DUST aims at both TYPO3 CMS and Neos. T3DUST is organised by Joey Hasenau, Petra Hasenau, Kay Strobach and Thomas Deuling. People can already apply for one of the positions via mail to Petra Hasenau: ph@cybercraft.de

Inspiring conference (March 27 - 28, Kolbermoor, Germany)

The leading TYPO3 Flow and Neos conference will be taking place again next year in Kolbermoor organised by <link http: www.techdivision.com>Techdivision. <link http: www.inspiring-conference.com tickets.html>Tickets are for sale already. There will also be a workshop preceding the conference.

TYPO3camps

• <link http: typo3camp-bremen.mixxt.de>TYPO3camp Bremen (August 8 – 10)
• <link http: typo3camp-munich.de>TYPO3camp Munich (September 5 – 7)
• <link https: www.facebook.com typo3camp.mallorca>TYPO3camp Mallorca (September 12 – 14)

Content elements

Flexibility in dealing with content is a hot topic in content management and in TYPO3. Neos has ultimate ways of dealing with flexible content and for TYPO3 CMS <link http: typo3.org extensions repository view templavoila>TemplaVoila is a long time favorite as a point-and-click, popular and easy template engine for TYPO3. Of course new attempts have been undertaken and we take a look at two newcomers that focus on the flexibility of content: DCE and Mask.

TemplaVoila

Tolleiv Nietsch who maintained TemplaVoila for a long <link http: blog.tolleiv.de templavoila-future>time stepped back from developing and maintaining  TV. It was believed for some time that this would be the end of further compatibility to new TYPO3 CMS versions. Recently new versions have been published driven by Wouter Wolters and Alex Schnitzler. They now released 2 new versions (3 actually but that contained some regressions) to be compatible with 4.-5 to 6.2. A new 2.0.0 is compatible with TYPO3 CMS 6.2 and higher only. The guys removed all backwards compatible code already from the codebase and are using new API methods.

Dynamic Content Elements - DCE

The DCE extension is available in the TYPO3 extension repository since February of 2012 and created by Armin Vieweg. Armin in a company, which was still very convinced in TemplaVoila (TV). Together with a colleague they recognized that flexible content elements was the one unique feature other extensions do not have. DCE stands for Dynamic Content Elements and enables the user to create own content element types, with complete own fields using the <link http: wiki.typo3.org fluid>Fluid template engine. DCE's are a simple solution for users to work on content. Armin worked on many bug-, feature- and support-requests this past 2 and a half years and DCE grew with its requirements and became better and better. DCE supports all TYPO3 versions between 4.5 and 6.2 (including). A DCE 2.0 is in the works and will be based on the experience gained with the 1.x version. Instead of Flexforms DCE 2.0 will be based on TCA and will store the information directly in database (as fields). The user has the choice to:

•    to create a new table for this DCE,
•    use existing fields in tt_content or
•    add new fields to tt_content

Furthermore DCEs itself will be completely file based. Currently all DCE definitions are stored in database, which makes it more complex to deploy. In the future each DCE gets its own folder, which contains all necessary informations like the dce and field configuration (as json), fluid templates (frontend/backend), assets and even custom viewhelpers. Because of this approach it is possible to create a DCE repository, where people may offer their ready to use DCEs in the future. Or use DCEs in their TYPO3 extensions or themes. The backend will be more intuitive and powerful thanks to AngularJS. There will be a migration tool to convert current DCEs (0.10.x) to the new future DCE format (2.0.x) after the release of DCE 2.0.0. This will be around Autumn 2014. You can support Armin with this magnificent project. Just ping him on Twitter: <link https: twitter.com arminvieweg>@ArminVieweg

Mask

Gernot Ploiner and his Austrian team are working on a new templating-extension, called "Mask". Mask creates pagetemplates and content elements. A <link http: www.startnext.at mask>crowdfunding campaign for Mask at startnext to fund a wizard for creating these page-templates and content-elements in Mask was successful and raised more than the required sum. Mask stores  the content-data directly into specific database-columns of tt_content. it is also possible to access the stored data via TypoScript (eg. to create a jumpnavigation or sliding content). Elements with repeating items are also possible. Therefore IRRE-technology is used. Mask only uses TYPO3-Standards. So everything from TYPO3 works together with Mask: multilanguage-support, versioning, workspaces and 3rd party extensions (gridelements, l10nmgr,...). The main differences to other templating-solutions are:

• Mask stores into database-fields, not via flexform
• It uses TYPO3 standards (TCA with IRRE and FAL, TypoScript, Extbase, Fluid, Backend Layouts)
• No PHP-knowledge needed (good usability)
• Versioning and deployment of the configuration-files is easy

You can find a prototype of Mask on a Live-Demo <link http: maskdemo.typo3experten.com typo3>maskdemo.typo3experten.com/typo3. At the moment, the project is looking for supporters via crowdfunding. If you like Mask and want to become an official supporter, get in touch with the developers for more information. Or support the team on Startnext until 10th of July:  http://www.startnext.at/en/mask/

Collaboration

There has been quite a <link https: www.facebook.com groups typo3 permalink>discussion on merging the effort for both extensions on the TYPO3 Facebook group. In the end that did not work out, unfortunately. A good example of how something like that can work is the combined effort of Joey Hasenau and Kay Strobach on theming and combining the with grid-elements. Even though it can be interpreted as a missed opportunity it also shows that TYPO3 is a framework offered by the community to the community to build functionality on. for the end-users it does not make it easier to chose what is best.

Write your documentation with WalkHub

Kristof Van Tomme contacted us to share the idea of Walkhub with us and make us aware if the <link https: www.indiegogo.com projects walkhub-tutorials-designed-for-the-internet>crowdfunding campaign they started to finance a tool that helps collaboration by easily creating walkthroughs. Walkhub guides the user through an interface one step at a time to help him accomplish the task at hand. guides the user through an interface one step at a time to help him accomplish the task at hand. The campaign runs for another 14 days and is in need of some serious support. The original idea of WalkHub stems from <link http: pronovix.com>Pronovix, a software development company active in the Drupal community. The Drupal community is great at sharing code, but terrible at sharing documentation. They realized, that to get people to collaborate they needed to invent a new tool that makes it easy to create, reuse and share documentation between sites and the Drupal project at large. That tool is called WalkHub - and it is designed to be useful for any project, not just Drupal. WalkHub helps collaboration, because it encourages authors to create reusable chunks of content. Walkthroughs are strictly structured and can easily be adapted to the visual context of a website. As a result it is much easier to reuse Walkthroughs between projects. WalkHub.net, the SaaS solution, is designed so that it could become the home of a range of community collections and their Walkthrough tutorials, the same way that Github is the code repository for many open source projects.

Try out WalkHub

WalkHub is open source, so you can install your own WalkHub or fork our code on GitHub freely. It is based on Drupal though. Creating and sharing community walkthroughs is free on our SaaS solution for open source projects like TYPO3. It’s still in Beta, but already now you can use it to redefine the way you do documentation on your projects, no matter if you are in the specification, implementation, user acceptance or production phase. To try out <link http: walkhub.net>WalkHub, get a Beta invite or ask our community manager to have a 1on1 session with you! Check out the events calendar for a user group meeting, code sprint or other event near you: <link http: typo3.org events>typo3.org/events/. Do not hesitate to share you TYPO3 activities in 'This Week in TYPO3'. Just let me (@benvantende) know what you are up to.