TYPO3 Version 11.3 — Outside the Milky Way

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.

User experience (UX) is about how users interact with a system or web interface. We reworked several areas of the TYPO3 backend, in particular the list view that users can access through the Web → List module. Let’s look at a few changes that will make the work of TYPO3 integrators and editors much easier.

The List module lets backend users work with various database records. Users can now easily select the columns to be shown in the list. This was possible in older TYPO3 versions but only in the “single table view”. The updated user interface makes it much easier for users to add and remove columns.

TYPO3 integrators can customize the view by applying a few lines of User TSconfig, and can disable the “column selector” for specific tables or for all tables as required.

The List module has an extended view to access further functions such as displaying extra details or seeing the change history on content elements. These functions are secondary actions that backend users need less frequently in their daily work. Previously the extended view was activated by a checkbox, which then applied the view to all the tables on the page.

With TYPO3 version 11.3, the checkbox has been removed, and  users can access the secondary functions for each table individually (using the button with three vertical dots).

Please note that the screenshots show a visual appearance that is likely not the final version for TYPO3 v11 LTS later this year. The TYPO3 Core developers have further design changes up their sleeves.

Do you know that backend users can download almost all database tables as CSV files from the List module? Of course, appropriate access permissions to the tables are required. This "export" functionality has long been part of TYPO3 Core but was sometimes missed by users.

In TYPO3 v11.3, the download button is now prominently displayed in the header of each table. But that’s not all. Instead of a simple CSV download, backend users can now customize the export. A dialog box lets users configure the file name and the format (CSV or JSON), along with other settings.

We received a lot of positive feedback when we introduced backend deep links in the last TYPO3 sprint release. We’ve made link sharing even simpler in TYPO3 v11.3: copying a link to the clipboard only takes two mouse clicks.

On all pages where deep linking is possible, backend users can click on the share button to open a context menu. Besides the function to create a TYPO3-internal bookmark, users can copy the link of the current backend page to their clipboard.

Previous TYPO3 v11 sprint releases already received some well-received improvements for the page and file tree as well as for the Record Selector. These components now feature super-fast and lightweight techniques such as the underlying SVG-based code. We started tackling another area in TYPO3 v11.3 that requires an overhaul: selecting files and records from a list.

Let’s look at an example: adding images to a page using the “Text and Media” content element. The “Add media file” button displays a modal window to select one or more files from a list. Backend users can now enable a checkbox on the left-hand side for each file, or open a context menu and check/uncheck all elements with one click. They can also toggle the current selection.

You will also find this great functionality in another often used area of the TYPO3 backend: the file list module. Further areas will likely follow in the next sprint release.

The TYPO3 Core is now compatible with PHP version 8.0. This PHP version receives security updates for at least the next 28 months from now, until November 2023. Developers can leverage many new features, optimizations, and improvements of the programming language that powers TYPO3. Read more about PHP version 8 on php.net.

The compatibility with PHP version 7.4 also remains in place.

Developers will also find the “File”-ViewHelper pretty impressive. The new ViewHelper can be used to create links to files through the File Abstraction Layer (FAL). It is not only super flexible, it also detects if users can access the link target directly (for example documents that editors uploaded into the “fileadmin/” area). In these cases, the ViewHelper creates a direct download link. If the resource is not publicly accessible, the file dump functionality kicks in. This lets extension authors implement custom solutions, for example additional authentication logic.

The “File”-ViewHelper also accepts attributes to force a download and to specify alternative download file names.

We have implemented unified standards and state-of-the-art technologies for developers in previous TYPO3 releases by following well-known PSR standards. We kept our promise to continuously improve the TYPO3 ecosystem and had a closer look at which areas we could improve further in this regard.

As many TYPO3 developers know, Extbase is the object-oriented PHP framework heavily used by the TYPO3 Core and for extension development. As extension developers often access information about the current request in their custom code, a clean PSR-7 Request/Response handling is important. To let developers achieve this, Extbase now implements a “ServerRequestInterface”. The details are all available through $this->request within Extbase controllers.

This change also results in a streamlined class “\TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Mvc\Request” and in several deprecations, for example the methods getRequestUri() and getBaseUri().

Security is another area that we constantly review and improve in TYPO3. TYPO3 now limits backend and frontend logins using the Symfony library “Rate Limiter”. This approach replaces the old solution that was not a state-of-the-art implementation from a security perspective. A PSR-15 middleware now uses the rate limit to block further authentication attempts if too many failed logins from the same IP address are detected.

The TYPO3 backend now supports two new languages: The Shona (Bantu) language (ISO 639-1 code “sn”) and Welsh (ISO 639-1 code “cy”). Shona is the language of the Shona people of Zimbabwe and spoken by more than 10 million people including dialects. Welsh (historically known as “Cymbric”) is spoken natively in Wales.

It is now possible to download translated backend labels from the TYPO3 translation server and CrowdIn for these languages, switch the backend interface to Shona or Welsh respectively, and to use these languages in site configurations.

Apart from the additional support of PHP version 8.0, the system requirements for TYPO3 v11.3 remain the same as outlined in the previous TYPO3 v11 release announcements. 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 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.

The next release on the roadmap is TYPO3 v11.4, scheduled on 7 September 2021. TYPO3 developers and contributors should be aware that this upcoming TYPO3 release will mark the Feature Freeze for the v11 cycle. From that point to the final LTS release, the Core Team will focus on testing, polishing, and refinement. No new features will be added, so that means now is the best time to submit your code contributions to the TYPO3 Core if you want to see them in TYPO3 v11 LTS.