[TYPO3-core] [TYPO3-dev] TYPO3 4.2 Alpha 1

[Ingo Renner]

The core team is proud to announce the first Alpha of TYPO3 version 4.2.

So what's new?

Backend improvements

You can now select in which module you start after you log in to the 
backend. When installing a new extension that contains backend modules 
they will show up immediately without the need of reloading the backend.
The TypoScript Object Browser now displays comments from your TS 
configurations.

Filter for the Page Tree

The navigation Page Tree now got a nifty searchbox to filter and 
highlight/dim elements in the tree. This is very handy for quickly 
finding your way through huge Page Trees. The navigation Page Tree is 
now organized so that all pages shown in the menu are grouped in their 
normal order while pages "Not in Menu" and SysFolders are ordered 
alphabetically below. TSconfig options exists to configure/disable both 
these features.

Moving of elements in Workspaces

Kasper Skårhøj implemented the long awaited feature to move elements in 
workspace. Additionally Workspace "swapping" for "New"-placeholders and 
"Deleted"-markers is now supported. Previously, both types would be 
published, not swapped. An option was added to completely turn off page 
and branch versioning (which are deprecated for TYPO3 4.2+). The whole 
Workspace can be previewed now for users with no backend login by a 
simple link you can email. Basically this is the same functionality as 
the preview link for individual pages available from the Web>Versioning 
module. You can find this function in User>Workspace (Workspace manager).

Admin Panel overhaul

Now you can define a time limit for operations which are measured by 
TYPO3's internal time tracking routines. Whenever this limit is 
exceeded, the corresponding row will be highlighted in the Admin Panel.

Improvements for the RTE

RTEmagic images are now duplicated when records are copied/versioned in 
tcemain. This is a long awaited feature that solves the bug that RTE 
magic images shared between two records would result in both 
disappearing if the one was deleted. Therefore this is also an important 
fix for Workspaces.

New language

The Albanian language was added so that localizations can be downloaded 
as they become available from the translators.

Raised minimum PHP version requirement

To run TYPO3 4.2alpha1 you need to have at least PHP 5.2. This move was 
necessary to use features introduced since PHP 5.0 which we hope will 
give a speed impovement to TYPO3.

As always

Other then the highlighted features we also packed a lot of bug fixes, 
performance improvements, enthusiasm, and love into this release.

Next steps to 4.2

Please test this Alpha as much as possible, especially the new features 
described above! If you're e.g. using one of the new features in a 
project of yours already and discover bugs, please report them 
immediately to http://bugs.typo3.org/!

During the next weeks, we will release two or three more Alphas before 
locking down the development of new features. We will then continue with 
Beta releases which are only meant for bug fixes before turning to 
Release Candidates and the final version of TYPO3 4.2. This means that 
you can expect the final version to be ready around the end of January '08.

For a detailed overview of the features planned for 4.2 and their 
progress, have a look at the 4.2 Development wiki page.

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

MD5 Sums:
363d7af17ca5164fe2fe6e7cd3040534  dummy-4.2.0alpha1.tar.gz
cf7c9f7e7e144e539c4e08cb67ba25c3  dummy-4.2.0alpha1.zip
ad492cc312c06d905b98fe6a5c0ba775  typo3_src-4.2.0alpha1.tar.gz
9bbbc430cdd00431cd79393a49ce5c45  typo3_src-4.2.0alpha1.zip
a080925b7250aeb3579a4dcf9dee3bab  typo3_src+dummy-4.2.0alpha1.zip

cheers
Ingo