[TYPO3-dev] [TYPO3-project-4-3] Announcing TYPO3 4.3.0beta1

Thu Oct 1 21:58:20 CEST 2009

The TYPO3 Core Team is proud to announce the first beta release of TYPO3
version 4.3. This version also serves as the "feature freeze" and locks
down the development of new features. Get a short overview of the most
important changes.

So, what's new in this release?

*General*

Integrated advanced Frontend Editing

The Frontend Editing functionality was not touched for ages and had an
outdated look and feel. The advanced Frontend Editing modernizes the
whole application by using a JavaScript approach and opens possibilities
to extend and customize the user interface. This also speeds up the
editing process since transactions are performed in the background using
AJAX. However, the current state of the advanced Frontend Editing still
has bugs that must be solved with the next two beta releases. Any help
by the community to polish this great feature is highly appreciated.

Integrated System Scheduler

A scheduling engine that allows extensions to schedule events has been
integrated. Events can be triggered at a single time or on a recurring
basis. The scheduler is executed through a cronjob that dispatches event
handling back to the extension that registered the event.

Integrated a new module for System Reports

For monitoring system events, a reporting module has been added. The
reports module is delivered with common tests to check the health of a
system. These tests include whether basic system requirements are met
and whether installed extensions need to be updated. Extensions can hook
into the reporting mechanism and provide their own tests as well.

Integrated Salted Passwords

Passwords in TYPO3 are stored using a regular MD5 hash. With knowledge
of that hash value, an attacker may be able to recalculate the original
password by using rainbow hash tables. The Salted Passwords extension
adds a random value - the salt - to the stored hash which drastically
reduces the chance of rainbow attacks. This feature can be used by
installing the system extension 'saltedpasswords'. Furthermore, a secure
channel must be available to transfer the password data. The HTTPS
protocol is one option and if that is not available the RSAAuth
extension can be used instead.

Improved Extbase and Fluid

A lot of work has been done in this release for the "Extbase" MVC
framework and the "Fluid" templating engine. An enormous number of
bugfixes and enhancements have been added. The persistence layer was
rewritten, many view helpers were revised or newly integrated, seamless
interaction with the page cache was added, and support for backend
modules was introduced. Backend module support is potentially unstable
for the time being but will become more stable in future beta releases.

Optimized performance

In the last few months there have been many initiatives to optimize the
overall performance of TYPO3. This list gives a short overview of the
enhancemen

* The frontend's time tracking functionality is no longer loaded when
the admin panel is enabled.
* Caches have been introduced to prevent repeatedly parsing the same XML
data or and repeatedly walking the same pagetree rootline.
* Extensions that are only used in the backend are no no longer loaded
in the frontend.
* The deprecation log can be disabled on production websites.

Integrated Error and Exception Handling

Continuing with the goal of easing the transition between TYPO3 v4 and
TYPO3 v5, the error and exception handling of FLOW3 was backported. This
new feature allows one to have custom error and exception messages.

Localization of hardcoded phrases

Many phrases that were hardcoded and thus only available in English have
been changed to use a localization file now. The localized versions of
these new labels will be available on the translation server as soon as
they are processed by the translation team.

Third party libraries

This release comes with updated JavaScript libraries. We now ship with
Ext JS 3.0 final.

*Backend improvements*

Possibility to hide Versioning & Workspaces

The "Versioning Management" system extension is removed from the list of
required extensions that are loaded by default. Thus, it's possible to
hide these user interface elements when the feature is not used at all
on a website.

Improved behavior in backend forms

Record selection can now be enhanced by a suggest wizard that searches
available records and shows the search results while typing. Regular
text areas without the rich text editor are now dynamically resizable.

*Frontend improvements*

Integrated new Media Content Element

A new media content element has been integrated and allows simple,
configurable handling of audio and video data. It is also possible to
use this element with external sources like YouTube. The Media Content
Element is delivered with default audio and video players but can also
be configured to use third-party players.

*Next steps to climb the TYPO3 4.3 hill*

Please test this beta release as much as possible, especially the new
features from the first three alpha releases and those described above!
If you're using one of the new features in a project already and
discover bugs, please report them immediately to bugs.typo3.org [1]!

If you're upgrading from a previous TYPO3 version, please be sure to
execute the database analyzer and update wizard in the TYPO3 Install Tool.

Since we are now in the beta phase, no more features will be integrated
and we will continue with bug fixing only. During the next few weeks, we
will release two more beta version to deliver a more stable product.
After that we will turn to the release candidate and the final version
of TYPO3 4.3. This means that you can expect the final version to be
ready by the end of November 2009.

For a detailed overview of the features planned for TYPO3 4.3 and their
progress, have a look at the TYPO3 v4 Development Page [2], the
bugtracker, and the ChangeLog. The list of pending documentation [3] in
the wiki describes the new properties and tells how they can be used.

You can download the packages at http://typo3.org/download/packages/ [4].

MD5 checksums:

5b448c752f3bc505feed958620d74f34  dummy-4.3.0beta1.tar.gz
cd7e8bf53c34d2faed5dc5ba978e5658  dummy-4.3.0beta1.zip
d1ab8b268e5838bee868a1d065c7b291  typo3_src-4.3.0beta1.tar.gz
7a5e34c853da450aa54e6e8e4c46c0c7  typo3_src-4.3.0beta1.zip
f1a7f5c91a3600fe1370c22f491bb39e  typo3_src+dummy-4.3.0beta1.zip

Rock on!
Olly

Links:
[1] http://bugs.typo3.org/
[2] http://forge.typo3.org/wiki/typo3v4-core
[3] http://wiki.typo3.org/Pending_Documentation
[4] http://typo3.org/download/packages/

Article as HTML:
[*] http://news.typo3.org/news/article/typo3-43-beta-1/
-- 
Oliver Hader
TYPO3 Release Manager 4.3