TYPO3 Version 11.1—Shields Up

Perfectly in time and equipped with all features as promised, TYPO3 v11.1 marks another milestone on our route towards the TYPO3 v11 LTS release later this year. The following sections focus on the main changes, improvements, and features. Check out the TYPO3 What’s New Slides and the detailed technical changelog for more in-depth details.

When you log in to the backend of TYPO3, you control a wide range of functions. Depending on your level of access, you can edit the contents of your company’s online presence, change business-critical data, or access highly sensitive user information. This great power needs to be protected so that only you have access to it.

Sometimes, a user name and password is just not secure enough. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) addresses this by adding a second factor to the login process or even multiple factors. The use of two factors is also referred to as two-factor authentication (2FA). When implemented correctly, MFA makes it significantly more difficult for an adversary to gain unauthorized access. That’s why MFA is considered one of the most effective security measures in information systems today.

When introducing an additional authentication method, it’s important to consider the user experience. If the login process becomes too cumbersome and complicated, users don’t configure it and miss out on an increased security level.

With our users at front-of-mind, we implemented a modern, secure, easy-to-use, and flexible MFA solution in TYPO3 version 11.1. You could say: "Your key to the galaxy!"

Once an administrator has activated an MFA provider, backend users can use it as a second authentication method for their login process. Typical providers are, for example, time-based one-time password (TOTP), counter-based one-time password, or WebAuthn. WebAuthn is a state-of-the-art web standard published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and supported by modern versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Edge browsers.

Following our promise to let TYPO3 site owners customize as many aspects of an instance as possible, the MFA implementation in TYPO3 allows developers to create additional providers. Check out the working examples “mfa_yubikey” (by Torben Hansen), “mfa_hotp” (by Oliver Bartsch), and “mfa_webauthn” (by Benjamin Franzke).

Space travelers around the galaxy know how important a user-friendly control panel is. It can save your life if you detect meteor showers early during your journey. As a TYPO3 backend user, your life usually doesn’t depend on it. Still, the option to adjust the backend view to your individual needs makes your day-to-day work easier and more pleasant.

The navigation area has had a fixed width since TYPO3 version 8. This area is the second column from the left in the backend, which shows the page tree (when modules under the “Web” section are accessed) or the file list (section “File”). Sometimes, the fixed width caused problems. In TYPO3 instances with long page titles and page trees with many levels, the contents in this area were cut off.

We reworked this component and reintroduced a resizable navigation area in TYPO3 version 11.1. We also got rid of a lot of JavaScript code.

We moved the icon to collapse and reopen the navigation area inside the panel. This location is now a better place from a usability perspective. You don’t need to readjust the navigation area’s width every time you re-login to the backend. TYPO3 remembers the last setting and restores the previous state on the next login.

By using CSS/Flexbox scaffolding, browsers now load the TYPO3 backend faster. Also, less data is transferred between TYPO3 and the client, which improves performance.

The module “Filelist” received a visual overhaul in TYPO3 v11.1. Using the same lightweight technologies as the page tree does, both components now feature a consistent look and feel in the navigation area. This change also means that we removed the iframe that was previously used by the module.

The main benefit is a performance boost, but you will also notice an input field at the top. This field lets you filter down the folder list based on search terms, similar to the page tree filter many backend users are used to in the page tree. The search in the file list even takes file names into account.

Small but useful improvements are sometimes not noticeable straight away. Like finding gold among space dust. Among others, we updated the visual appearance of the record history. The settings are displayed in-line and now use less space. We repositioned some buttons and replaced styles with custom CSS or CSS utility classes. We also streamlined a few labels to make the purpose and function of this backend module more clear.

We are continuously striving to improve accessibility so that  people with diverse hearing, movement, sight, and cognitive ability can use the TYPO3 backend.

Following the suggestions by the WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices 1.1, users can now navigate through the main module menu and the help menu by using only their keyboard. This group also includes users with screen readers or similar assistive technology.

Another accessibility improvement is that you can now set an alt-tag for a custom backend login image. To help users comply, a warning is triggered in the deprecation logs when no alt-tag exists.

The system requirements for TYPO3 v11.1 remain the same as outlined in the last TYPO3 v11 release announcement. The same applies to our support and maintenance promise.

You can install TYPO3 in various ways. Our recommended approach is setting up a project using PHP Composer. Alternatively, you can still download and extract the source packages at get.typo3.org. You find further details at get.typo3.org/version/11.

TYPO3 version 11.1 is the second sprint release of the v11 series and was released just a few weeks after version 11.0.  To learn more about the release, check out the TYPO3 What’s New Slides or the detailed technical changelog.

The next release on the roadmap is TYPO3 v11.2, scheduled in 10 weeks, on May the 4th, 2021.