This Week in TYPO3 (Week 49)

Week ending December 6

TYPO3 CMS

After the release of TYPO3 CMS 6.2 LTS the CMS team was able to take a fresh look into our workhorse CMS. Visually TYPO3 CMS had not been changed for a very long time. The usability team is now an integral part of the CMS team, which also makes it easier to get things done in a faster pace. The team is doing regular sprints and has half yearly Active Contributor Meetings. Technically a lot of things have changed too, like the use of namespaces. This year it also became clear that TYPO3 Neos and TYPO3 CMS will live together for a long time as members of the TYPO3 family. All this combined provides a solid foundation to deliver a radically improved TYPO3 CMS focused on editors and integrators. On the <link http: typo3.org typo3-cms roadmap>road to TYPO3 CMS 7 LTS in the end of 2015 <link http: typo3.org news article the-typo3-community-publishes-typo3-cms-70-a-new-version-of-its-free-content-management-system>a first sprint release was published. A new visual language for the backend is introduced now and will be put into place bit by bit. The backend runs on Twitter bootstrap laying the foundation for a more 'app' like approach and of course responsiveness. The color scheme is more streamlined and in general comes with less distraction.  Usability of the backend is important for the new LTS release and a lot is done to make that come true. The passionate and talented team has some great concepts up their sleeves that they will integrate into the core of TYPO3 CMS over the next versions.

TYPO3 Neos

Week 49 was one of the last weeks of the big Neos sprint. At the time of this writing Neos 1.2 has been published. Week 49 saw the release of beta3 and a preview for the coming Neos 1.3. You can find a demo of the full TYPO3 Neos 1.2 on <link http: neos.demo.typo3.org>neos.demo.typo3.org A demo of the development version on the way to version 1.3 can be found here: <link http: neos-master.demo.typo3.org>neos-master.demo.typo3.org

TYPO3 Association

Open Source Initiative

The TYPO3 Association joined the Open Source Initiative as member. Simon Phipps, president of OSI is already known to the TYPO3 Association <link news article report-from-the-august-cebab-meeting>having consulted on how the TYPO3 Association could support the TYPO3 community in a better way. OSI is actively involved in Open Source community-building, education, and public advocacy to promote awareness and the importance of non-proprietary software. Olivier Dobberkau, President of the TYPO3 Association says: "By joining the Open Source Initiative, the TYPO3 Association can extend our own efforts in fostering open source development while serving as a tangible example of the promise of open source software: better quality, higher reliability, flexibility, and lower costs."

Budget voting results

The members of the TYPO3 Association have been asked to vote on the budget proposals in November. The rsults of the voting can be found: here: <link https: voting.typo3.org election budget-priority-poll-2015-1 showresults>voting.typo3.org/election/budget-priority-poll-2015-1/showresults

Teams

Marketing team

Already a few weeks ago, but still worth mentioning is the fact that Fabian Stein organised a marketing code sprint from November 19 - 21 in a Youth Hostel in Diez, Germany. Fabian is member of the marketing team and is employed by <link http: www.punkt.de en.html>Punkt.de. This sprint is a result of the continued marketing efforts by the marketing team. Besides longer time community contributors Boris Hinzer and Philipp Randt the sprint welcomed a number of very gifted new community members.  Attendants of the sprint were: James David Wiebe (<link https: www.mittwald.de>Mittwald), Florian Hansen (<link http: heroldhansen.de _blank>heroldhansen.de), Laura Bolotnikova (<link http: www.andersundsehr.com>anders und sehr), Fabian Stein (<link http: punkt.de _blank>Punkt.de and marketing team), Philipp Randt (<link http: www.mit-ueberblick.de _blank>Mit Überblick and design team), Boris Hinzer (<link http: web-vision.de _blank web-vision>web-vision and marketing team), Bianca Niestroj (Punkt.de) The main goal of the sprint was to create a style guide for TYPO3 and easy and fun to use templates for flyers, presentations, websites and all things marketing to be used by community members. The team created a number of personas representing  kinds of people that interact with the TYPO3 project. Fabian considers this sprint to be pretty successful also in the sense that it attracted new people that might be engaged for a longer time as part of the design team. As the results are not finished yet there is currently nothing the team can share currently. A next sprint to finish the work started at this sprint is already planned for February 2015.

Events

Second TYPO3camp Poland (November 21 - 22, Pozna?)

The second TYPO3Camp in Poland took place on November 21 - 22 at the School of Humanities and Journalism in Pozna?. Agata Pi?niak, office manager at Macopedia, <link news article second-typo3camp-in-poland-and-why-you-cannot-miss-it-next-year>writes about the event.

Inspiring conference (March 26 - 28, 2015 Kolbermoor, Germany)

The first bigger event of the coming year is Inspiring Conference. The leading, international TYPO3 FLOW and TYPO3 NEOS event of the year will take place again for the fourth time in Kolbermoor. With the traction Neos is gaining this will be an important event for 2015.

Miscellaneous

How Composer helps you managing TYPO3 extensions in your project

If you use a version control system (VCS) like SVN or Git for your TYPO3 CMS projects  <link https: getcomposer.org>Composer might be interesting for you. Armin Vieweg explains how Composer is a perfect tool to download extensions and their updates automatically.

How do you handle extensions in SVN or Git?

When Armin started working at <link http: www.sunzinet.com>sunzinet, his new employer just put the extensions in the repository of the project. Of course they have got a lot of TYPO3 projects, that use the same extensions like for example realurl, powermail or dce (dynamic content elements). That means that each extension exists several times, in several versions, in each repository. To keep these extensions up to date takes a lot of time and there is an extremely high redundancy. Armin got the idea to use SVN externals. Not all extensions they use, have their own SVN repository, however. You need separate repositories if you want to link to a specific extension. They created their own repository that contains all standard extensions. Even this is time-consuming, because you have to download the extension, import it to SVN and update the SVN external to point to the new version.

Composer to the rescue!

 All extensions uploaded to TER are also available in Composer. TYPO3 provides its own Composer repository (<link http: composer.typo3.org>composer.typo3.org) containing all extensions and their dependencies to other extensions. To use it and receive extensions and their updates automatically, you just need one file in the root of your TYPO3 project: composer.json In this file you just tell Composer, which repositories to use (composer.typo3.org or your own repository) and which extensions you require. There is no overhead to get the extensions you need. Just include them in composer.json and run it. This saves a lot of time in your daily work with TYPO3 CMS.

Slides from usergroup cologne

Armin did a small presentation for the <link http: tugcgn.de>TYPO3 usergroup in Cologne. In this presentation Composer is explained, how you use it to manage your extensions and how to create your own Composer repository for your extensions, which are not published in TER. Check it out: <link http: de.slideshare.net arminvieweg typo3-composer-41758529>de.slideshare.net/ArminVieweg/typo3-composer-41758529 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.