[TYPO3-english] Gridelements, semantic content and the right strategies

[Thomas Skierlo]

Hi Dominic,

thanks a lot for your answer. When I decided for my new templating 
toolkit a couple of days ago I had a short look at the FED/Flux 
extensions too. My basic idea was to stay as close to the core as 
possible, at least when it comes to basic page layouts and subgrid 
handling (meaning structural FCE, not functional ones). Everybody 
expects to find this very basic functionality in an ECMS.

The page templates can easily be handled by FLUIDTEMPLATE -- only 
out-of-the-box Fluid needed. Took me less than 3 hours to migrate this 
part of TV to Fluid. I like the powerful control structures of Fluid, 
especially the awareness of content in the neighborhood. I disliked the 
absence of basic TYPO3 constants and system settings in the View 
component. Found no other way as passing them as variables (which 
works). Maybe they are available without passing them, but I could not 
find any hint in the rather poor documentation (all documentation 
targets mainly on Ext. developers -- which definitely are not the vast 
majority of TYPO3 users).

Initially I thought that I could use FLUIDTEMPLATE - being listed as a 
regular Content Object on tsref - for Subgrid Elements too (with or 
without Ext. Gridelements), but I found no way to do so (maybe there is 
one, but nobody shares the information).

After evaluating Gridelements for a couple of days I'm not satisfied at 
all. The functionality is a perfect match to a very early version of TV. 
Same old-school techniques. The problem I described in my first post is 
a very basic one -- and I spent more than 30 hours without finding a 
solution (maybe because of my lack of advanced TS knowledge). On the 
other hand Gridelements integrates nicely into the BE.

Then I thought about the next alternative. Building my own extension for 
fluid based FCE. It would allow access to all my constants and system 
parameters and I could use pure Fluid when it comes to layout. My next 
thought was: If that's the way to go, TYPO3 will be gone soon. I could 
imagine to use my own extension for functional stuff, like custom FCEs, 
but not for basic grid layout and structure. There must be a "Core" way 
to solve this very basic task. But there isn't. The only official method 
still uses markers.

Without knowing it I think that FED/Flux uses this very way. Own 
functionality in two own namespaces, plus the fluid default NS. The 
concept is brilliant. A kind of Fluid parser which brings it's own view 
helpers. And exactly this might be a problem later, when more and more 
standard Fluid view helpers become available offering the very same 
functionality. You either are dependent on FED/Flux forever, or you have 
to redo all the work when TYPO3 finally offers it's own solution for 
Fluid based templating.

Again, FED/Flux look perfect for my current problems, and maybe I will 
decide to use it.

Is it possible to use only the FCE/Content part? Fluidtemplate for the 
page layout, FED/Flux for the subgrids and FCE. Or will it replace 
Fluidtemplate? Searching for FED/Flux on Google I found some posts about 
FED/Flux with Gridelements? What would be the ideal combination of 
extensions for a future prove decision? How would core-people (if 
available) answer this question?

Again, thank you for your help,

Thomas



Am 15.08.2012 21:01, schrieb Domi:
> Hi Thomas,
>
> I fully understand your questioning, for me lot of similar questions 
> came up over some time ago. One of the main problems: TYPO3 will 
> always give you many strategies and many ways to solve a problem.
>
> I am still wondering about the gridelements extension a lot, because 
> it actually was at the TYPO3 4.6 as sysextension project already. And 
> it never made its way through, even not in 4.7. The documentation 
> lacks and you need to have seeing talents, if you want to realise more 
> advanced configurations. There comes a need of flexform, loads of 
> typoscript, backend CE and confusing ways of how to implement them.
>
> I finally switched to a very comfortable way using flux and fed, both 
> very good maintained extensions and highly under development. And they 
> make use of gridelements functionality like drag 'n drop.
>
> What works very good and nice is using the new FCE concept of fed. 
> There flexform, typoscript and backend CE gets merged into one single 
> file: HTML. With the flux notation in your html file you can do 
> everything what you did already in flexform, but instead of a highly 
> nested XML file, just one single line of html code with some parameters.
>
> Check out the content element section:
> http://fedext.net/features/content-elements/explanation.html
>
> In the beginning its bit of learning the new semantic of flux, but its 
> just awesome and fast, you build complex customizable FCEs in minutes 
> of time.
>
> So maybe check this out, I use it and highly recommend the fluid way 
> of life - in combination of flux and fed. In fed I still only use the 
> FCE concept, which is exactly what you are looking for - it replaces 
> the TV FCE with way more comfort.
>
> Cheers
> Dominic
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