2012 started relatively quiet of course. Everyone has to get into gear again. The TYPO3 community is heading into an interesting year with a FLOW3 1.1 release, a first release of the new CMS based on Phoenix and updates to the 4.x branch, worth calling it a major update.
TYPO3 Teams
In 2012 the community structure will be improved further. With the changes in the TYPO3 Association there will be more responsibility flowing into the community itself. We have a number of 'official' TYPO3 teams that have regular meetings and report on progress as well. There is more interaction between the teams. The marketing team relies on the design team, the marketing team relies on the screen cast team etc. The structured approach of setting up teams provides a reliable basis for people to join the teams and commit to the teams. At the moment there is a mix of teams and projects and it is definitely one goal to make sure the 'official' teams get a status (like typo3.org email addresses) and a place of there own in the TYPO3 ecosystem. The editorial team is about to get activated under the leadership of Patrick Lobacher and Sacha Storz. The team is proud to have a host of native English speakers from the US an UK. Especially with the imminent launch of typo3.org we are sure to get quality content on the new website with the presence of these native guys. The screen cast team has a very active cooperation and hopes to release it's first screen casts in the first quarter of 2012. The design team is working on visuals for typo3.org and for the official TYPO3 events of this year. There are plenty of other teams that publish protocols and news articles. Until now there is no central hub for a team activity overview, but one will be created during the course of this year.
Branding TYPO3
Rasmus Skjoldan has been involved in TYPO3 style guide and is responsible for the TYPO3 logo. Since last year Rasmus has been working on a new branding for TYPO3. The Developer Days will be the first event where TYPO3 uses the new Brand book and Story book concepts. The Brand and Story book are produced to ensure that TYPO3 is looked at in a homogeneous way. We'd like to present TYPO3 as a stable reference point, allowing people to always remember us for Bringing Structure to the World, for being Sharing & Caring and for our Pursuit of excellence. All this is combined in our Brand Archetype of the Caregiver. Overall, the Brand book is expressing how the TYPO3 brand should generally feel like and indicate what TYPO3 stands for. Using the Caregiver archetype as the underlying basis for the TYPO3 Brand personality, we've begun setting up a Story Book for 2012. Ben van 't Ende, community manager, will give presentations at all TYPO3 events small and large about the new branding.
For more info about this, see <link http: www.slideshare.net rasmusskjoldan the-heartbeat-of-typo _blank>www.slideshare.net/rasmusskjoldan/the-heartbeat-of-typo3
TYPO3 version 4.7
Steffen Ritter, release manager of TYPO3 version 4.7, reports the release is on track. In addition new code-related features and a new distribution, the TYPO3 Government Package has been set up and published to showcase a best-practice approach on handling web-accessiblity requirements. The biggest new feature will be the file abstraction layer. The basic idea of FAL is to have a DB driven layer between TYPO3 and your assets. Utilizing this will open up completely new possibilities like displaying usage information on a file or to deny users to delete a file which is used somewhere on the website.
Project page: <link http: forge.typo3.org projects typo3v47-projects _blank>forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v47-projects
News article: <link http: news.typo3.org news article typo3-community-january-2012 current-state-of-typo3-47-development>news.typo3.org/news/article/current-state-of-typo3-47-development/
FLOW3 and Phoenix
Karsten Damblekans elaborately reports on the month of January starting improved communication on FLOW3 and Phoenix, besides the already published protocols of the, almost, daily scrum meetings. There will be a dedicated Phoenix day each week. Sebastian has turned Typoscript inside out into a new concept that promises to combine an easier rendering workflow with more power for the TypoScript developer.
With use of FLOW3 being more widespread than ever, the team worked on a code migration tool with a more streamlined approach to deliver the update scripts.
Sebastian, together with Thomas Maroschik, worked on a prototype implementation for a new extension and package repository.
Read more on Phoenix and FLOW3 developments in Karsten's news article:
<link http: news.typo3.org news article typo3-community-january-2012 heads-first-into-a-new-year-january-2012>news.typo3.org/news/article/heads-first-into-a-new-year-january-2012/
Marketing team meeting
In this year of marketing TYPO3, the marketing team decided to have another live meeting. Best results are reached when sitting down together face to face. The team welcomed some new faces and now consists of 8 people.
The team has been largely occupied with the relaunch of typo3.org in 2011 with two sprints dedicated to the relaunch. The effort took longer then expected and is far more complicated then estimated at first. The team discussed the relaunch together with Joern Bock, one of the project managers of the relaunch, and constructed a new time-line for relaunch with a relaunch date that is not that far away anymore. On March 1st the exact relaunch date will be announced.