TYPO3 4.2 Alpha 3

Categories: Development Created by Ingo Renner
The core team is proud to announce the third Alpha of TYPO3 version 4.2.
So what's new? Cleaner Backend Project on the home straight This alpha release can definitely be labeled as the "reincarnation of the backend". For the first time since TYPO3 3.5 we see a new default backend with many changes aiming to improve the usability for end users. The restructuring of the backend is called "Cleaner Backend Project" and is now mostly complete. Only minor quirks here and there still exist, which should be ironed out when the final version of TYPO3 4.2 ships. The new backend comes with a completely new toolbar at the top of the backend. This toolbar now contains the logout button, currently logged in user, workspace selector, a menu to clear caches, a shortcut menu, and a search field. Further changes introduced by the Cleaner Backend Project include a new toolbar when editing content elements and other records. The editor toolbar replaces the former buttons at the top and bottom of the editing forms by grouping them together and making them stick to the top of the form even if you scroll down. Another welcomed change concerns the clipboard. Until now it was unclear whether the clipboard was in copy or move mode, this has been resolved by adding a select box clearly stating the current mode. Tabs in forms now indicate whether a required field is hidden on them. Last but not least context sensitive help is now shown when you hover over the help icons you find in the backend. Rich Text Editor keeps improving In this release the RTE also has again seen some good improvements. The biggest,  and  likely most welcomed change for our many Mac users is the support of Safari 3, both on Mac and Windows machines. Other than that the RTE now supports even more semantically related tags, such as blockquote, q, sub, and sup. "New front end login box" (newloginbox) now part of the core You might know the login content element from the days before newloginbox. Back then it was a simple way (with not too many features) to make it possible for web site visitors to log in to restricted areas of a website. Since the first release of newloginbox this core content element lost more and more importance as the competing extension offered way more features. With this release the newloginbox comes back home to the core and sees its rebirth as "felogin" system extension. This new extension now completely replaces the former login content element by extracting the needed functionality from newloginbox. As you might know, too newloginbox also consisted of a second part, the user listing plugin. You can find this plugin as a new extension in TER, called "feuserlisting". This means that with the final release of TYPO3 4.2 newloginbox will be rendered obsolete and felogin and feuserlisting together take its place. Kudos concerning this goes to Steffen Kamper and Stefan Strasser for maintaining the former newloginbox and moving it back home into the core. Developer relevant changes This alpha3 release also some features especially interesting for extension developers. The list module offers a group of functions when extended view is enabled, using hooks you can now add own actions to this list. Until now when developing backend modules you were completely on your own concerning templates for the base layout of your module. This has now been changed as you can use similar functions (like when developing frontend plugins) to parse templates and replace markers with your content. An even more interesting feature is the availability of a unified AJAX interface for backend modules. Its concept is similar to that known from the eID feature for the frontend. You first register an ajaxId, which you then use to make AJAX requests to the newly introduced typo3/ajax.php. That file will then take care of delegating that request to the class/method you registered for the ajaxId. The extension manager now correctly adheres to the constraints you set for your extension. It is now possible to post process typolinks. New hooks have been added in db_list, TCEmain, and tslib_content. For some of them you need to implement interfaces, which are also new with this release. Reminder: Raised minimum PHP version requirement To run TYPO3 4.2alpha3 you need to have <link http: buzz.typo3.org people stucki article leaving-php4-behind>at least PHP 5.2. This move was necessary to use language features introduced since PHP 5.0. As always Other then the highlighted features we also packed tons of bug fixes, performance improvements, enthusiasm, and love into this release. Special thanks for the help in making this release what it is deserve our most active community contributors Helmut Hummel, Malte Jansen, and Steffen Kamper (order not associated to any measures). Next steps to 4.2 Please test this Alpha as much as possible, especially the new features from alpha1, alpha2, and those described above! If you're e.g. using one of the new features in a project of yours already and discover bugs, please report them to the bugtracker at <link http: bugs.typo3.org>bugs.typo3.org. The next release will be TYPO3 4.2 Beta1, which also declares feature freeze, locking down the development of new features and only allowing for bugfixes to be committed to the core. The beta1 release is targeted for the first week of February. If everything goes well and not too many bugs are found we will then continue with Release Candidates one or two weeks later. This means that you can expect the final version to be ready around mid or end of February. For a detailed overview of the features planned for 4.2 and their progress, have a look at the <link http: wiki.typo3.org index.php>4.2 Development wiki page, the <link http: bugs.typo3.org>bugtracker, and the <link http: typo3.svn.sourceforge.net viewvc typo3 typo3core tags typo3_4-2-0alpha3>ChangeLog. You can download the packages at <link http: typo3.org download packages>typo3.org/download/packages/. MD5 Sums:
3df77c554e59ed627fa1c2a2404ad734 dummy-4.2.0alpha3.tar.gz
1897fff5fa5e7171e0884a4f8cf17fa7 dummy-4.2.0alpha3.zip
172cc1f2d6df1b1f9290a10acf497b18 typo3_src-4.2.0alpha3.tar.gz
da3d706609b5c7a4f3302689d18cfe67 typo3_src-4.2.0alpha3.zip cheers
Ingo