TYPO3 Version 10.3 — Almost There

Let’s pick a few outstanding aspects as examples what integrators, administrators, and developers can expect from the new version.

As the last sprint release of the v10 cycle, TYPO3 version 10.3 is the so-called “feature freeze” version. This means no new features from now on, until the LTS release in April, and the core team and all contributors are focused on testing, polishing, and refining the release. However, there are some exceptions for minor improvements to complete features that have been already added in previous v10 sprint releases.

This biggest and probably the most exciting new feature that has been eagerly awaited by the community made it into the TYPO3 core in time: dashboards.

The dashboard  provides backend users with a quick overview of important system information and statuses. At-a-glance information is displayed in widgets, and a wide range of types and styles are available out-of-the-box. Some standard widgets are included in the TYPO3 core, for example a “call-to-action button”, the Getting Started Tutorial, the TYPO3 news as a RSS feed, and some basic information about the current TYPO3 instance.

Flexibility and expandability were important factors during the concept phase and development of dashboards. Developers can create their own widgets and backend users can not only configure multiple dashboards (and easily switch between them), but also add, remove, and even rearrange widgets to their heart’s content.

To learn more about dashboards, read the article “An Update About the Dashboards” by Richard Haeser (Initiative Lead).

TYPO3 is famous for its multilingual backend: there are not many content management systems on the market that allow users to work in the administrator area in their native language, no matter which language this is — as long as a translation exists.

After a long history with Pootle, TYPO3 now uses Crowdin to take translations to the next level. Georg Ringer, who leads the localization initiative, gave us an insight into the concept and the idea behind the initiative last year (see his article “Better Multilingual Support”). The SaaS solution Crowdin is now used as the localization/translation management platform for TYPO3 v10 by default, and you can do more than just translating the languages for the TYPO3 backend. The solution can also be used to translate labels of TYPO3 extensions, your extensions!

As TYPO3 v9 LTS will be supported until October 2021 at least, this feature is optionally available since TYPO3 version 9.5.14 as a feature toggle.

See the documentation for further details.

Up until now, TYPO3’s system emails were  just plain text emails. But not anymore!

TYPO3 v10.3 now supports nice looking template-based HTML and plain-text emails by using the Fluid templating engine. Several emails created by the TYPO3 core use the new format: for example the notification email that can be triggered if a user logs into the backend, or the email that is sent to the appropriate users when an element changes its workspace stage.

Why don’t you trigger a test email in the Install Tool yourself to see how nice an HTML-based email can look?

But this is not all: by overwriting the default paths to the Fluid template files, developers and integrators can implement their own customized email templates. Imagine system-generated notification emails with the brand logo and colors of your agency! How amazing is this?

Backend user accounts are without question one of the most important data sets in a TYPO3 system. Managing user accounts including users’ details and permissions is not easy, if you don’t have a clear and well-curated overview of the data.

The backend user module now provides a new detail view for TYPO3 administrators. It shows the basic user data such as real name, email address, and start/stop date at the top, and all groups, subgroups, permissions, DB and file mounts, allowed page types, read/write access to tables, etc. below.

To summarize this new feature: managing backend users has never been so easy and straightforward.

We cannot stress this enough — in fact I think we have mentioned it in almost every release announcement article over the last few years — security is one of our top priorities and maximum privacy settings are TYPO3’s defaults.

Now TYPO3 supports SameSite cookies to improve users’ privacy. Modern browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Microsoft Edge and Safari include this new feature to “mitigate the risk of cross-origin information leakage”, with “some protection against cross-site request forgery attacks” according to the OWASP. Websites and web applications can set a flag with each cookie that declares if the cookie should be restricted to a first-party or same-site context. In other words, we can now define whether to share certain information (e. g. session cookie) with third-party sites if scripts or iframes are used on a site for example.

All cookies sent by TYPO3 now support the SameSite-flag. Frontend session cookies are set to “SameSite=Lax” and backend session cookies as well as Install Tool session and workspace cookies set the more restrictive “SameSite=Strict” flag.

Under a few rare circumstances (for example with OAuth2 or OpenID connect solutions), the default settings might be too strict. For these edge cases, the Install Tool offers a system configuration to adjust the SameSite cookies policies.

By the way, due to its importance and doubtless privacy improvement, the SameSite cookies feature has also been implemented in TYPO3 v8 and v9 earlier this month, so that you can apply enhanced privacy settings even in older versions of TYPO3.

Back in March 2019, we announced that version 5.7 or later is required if you use the popular MySQL database server for TYPO3 v10. Although this version is fully supported and can be used without problems, you can even use a lower version. TYPO3 v10 LTS will be compatible with MySQL version 5.5 or later.

Needless to say that MySQL is not the only database engine that has been successfully tested with TYPO3. We also officially support MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and the PHP-embedded database engine SQLite.

You can find out more about the system requirements in the official documentation.

TYPO3 can be installed in various ways. For example, install the traditional way by using the source package at get.typo3.org or the modern way by setting up a project using composer, to name just two. Further details can be found at get.typo3.org/version/10.

To learn more about the new features, changes and improvements of TYPO3 version 10.3, have a look at the TYPO3 What’s New Slides or the detailed technical changelog.

The next release on the roadmap is TYPO3 v10.4, the long-term support (LTS) version, scheduled for 21 April 2020. TYPO3 v10 LTS will have priority bug fixes and support until April 2023.

Now, we encourage you to check out TYPO3 version 10.3, embrace the new features and improvements, share your thoughts, and report issues.

If you are an extension developer, get familiar with the API and its changes and check out the new features of TYPO3 v10. If you’re maintaining a publicly available TYPO3 extension on TYPO3 Extension Repository (TER), GitHub, or Packagist, please publish v10 compatible versions as soon as possible. This will make it easier for the TYPO3 community to adopt TYPO3 v10 as soon as the LTS release launches.

After you have published a v10 compatible extension in the TYPO3 Extension Repository (TER), keep an eye on the @t3extensions Twitter account. If you're lucky it will be picked up and promoted. Speaking of luck: Did you know, if you do get your v10 extensions released, you’ll be in with a chance to win a prize draw which the TYPO3 Association just announced in effort to help boost TYPO3 v10 adoption?

Oh, hold on! One last important thing: PARTY! The days around the 21st of April are packed with TYPO3 release parties around the world — and everyone is invited: developers, integrators, editors, managers, graphic artists, etc. Find a release party in your area in the official release party list or add your party to the list.