Today, the TYPO3 community released the third and last beta of the upcoming version 4.4 of TYPO3. The final release, planned for June 22nd 2010, is getting closer. If you have followed the last alpha and beta releases, you might have noticed that all features have already been included now. However, one last and very important change has just been included: A new look and feel to the TYPO3 Backend. Lars Zimmermann initially came up with an updated look of the current t3skin during the TYPO3 User Experience Week in 2009 while designing the new installer (also included in TYPO3 4.4, by the way). Big thanks go to Jens Hoffmann, overseeing the design process during the last weeks with Lars, and Steffen Gebert and Steffen Ritter who were in charge of implementing these modified designs.
There have been some improvements to the new Debug Bar, the Install Tool and the CSS/JS Compressor. Additionally, the Sprite API got improved, as there is now an additional API for creating sprites for the TYPO3 Core, as well as changes so the new icon sprites are used in the Backend.
Status of the Introduction Package
You probably have read about the introduction package, a new package that can be downloaded from TYPO3.org and includes a full featured template with a basic setup. The introduction package will arrive just in time with TYPO3 4.4, however is not officially ready yet. You can download the current development snapshot (no warranty for the package) <link http: typo3.bennimack.net packages introductionpackage-4.4-latest.zip>from here.
Get your package
You can grab one of the following files from the <link http: typo3.org download packages>download page.
MD5 checksums:
996df4a559071cab166927589b283519 dummy-4.4.0beta3.tar.gz
1dbeea1424145fc35ded07ad148ca30b dummy-4.4.0beta3.zip
f3457d3940524d7084e0f3cf0fd0f258 typo3_src-4.4.0beta3.tar.gz
c83f8e87388727565d2cfb5e408ba705 typo3_src-4.4.0beta3.zip
5c615f080b6d433b750660055280d768 typo3_src+dummy-4.4.0beta3.zip
What's next?
The next steps are: Testing, testing, testing -- and that is something anybody can do. Please download the package and play around with it. Be sure to report every single bug on <link http: bugs.typo3.org>bugs.typo3.org.
Benjamin Mack
-- Release Manager TYPO3 4.4
