[TYPO3-core] [TYPO3-dev] Announcing TYPO3 4.2 Beta 1a

[Ingo Renner]

Dear TYPO3 users,

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

Unfortunately after having the first beta packaged three days ago we 
noticed that a patch submitted just before caused some trouble which is 
why we kept this announcement back and are now releasing Beta1a.

So what's new?

More polishing on the Cleaner Backend Project

The Cleaner Backend Project has seen some important changes since TYPO3 
4.2alpha3 was released only three weeks ago. The most obvious 
improvement is the document header, which is now present across all Web 
modules. Many changes also went into the new toolbar at top of the 
backend. Items in the new shortcut menu now reflect their type by 
showing the correct icon instead of a default pencil icon. Another new 
menu in the toolbar collects recently used and open documents, replacing 
the old Documents module. The current backend user's real name is shown 
in the toolbar, too and is linked to the user's preferences settings.
Another very prominent change is the new eye-pleasing style of the 
module menu. The menu now collapses and expands without the reload 
required by the old backend’s module menu. When you install an extension 
that comes with a new backend module or you set a new language in your 
user preferences the menu also refreshes to reflect these changes. Other 
than that many rendering issues have been fixed in Internet Explorer 6 
and Safari.

User settings revamped

Also related to the Cleaner Backend Project is the reworking of the user 
preferences settings. These have now been divided into groups to make it 
easier to find the settings you need to adjust.
The user preferences also come with an option to set a module you want 
to start in after you log in to the backend.

Tree can be collapsed now

The page tree can now be collapsed so that the right content area 
resizes to fit the whole space from the right of the module menu. To 
make this even more useful, the tables in the list module are now set to 
expand to the entire available width. This means that if you have a 
table and want to see many columns you do not have to scroll 
horizontally anymore. Instead you can just hide the tree and gain more 
space to look at your data.

Improved Constants Editor

The Constants Editor has also been improved to save you even more time 
when working with it. Until now you had to check which fields you wanted 
to change, save and finally edit your settings. Now you only need to 
click an icon in front of the settings you want to change and you are 
immediately presented with an input field.

Page is being generated message eliminated

You most likely have seen the message that the page is being generated. 
This message is caused when a page gets accessed from two clients with 
only a minor time difference. TYPO3 4.2beta1a comes with a change that 
should fix this behavior so that it does not appear anymore.

New Installer not shipping with TYPO3 4.2 final

The release of this beta version also means that we now have a feature 
freeze for TYPO3 4.2 so it was time to review the big projects that were 
targeted for TYPO3 4.2. These projects included a new form wizard, the 
cleaner backend, the TypoScript editor with code highlighting and the 
new installer. A commit policy for these projects existed that allowed 
the developers to bypass the strict commit rules for the TYPO3 core to 
get faster results. The developers did not have to wait for a complete 
review of their changes in the core list, but were allowed to directly 
commit them as long as they would not change other parts of the core 
that were not related to their project. After they committed their 
changes they had to send a "For Your Information" message to the core 
list explaining what they changed.

TYPO3 is still of course an Open Source project and although we all 
would like to devote our time to the project, this is not possible in 
all cases. It might happen that we have very limited time or no time at 
all to work on the things we would like to work on. There may be many 
reasons for this; from an extended work load at a job, to personal 
problems, needing some general time off, or in some cases missing 
financial support to work on such projects.

The commit policy described above also specified that we would have a 
review of the projects prior to releasing Beta 1. Quite early after the 
work on TYPO3 4.2 started it became clear that we would not be able to 
ship the promised form wizard due to Patrick’s availability. The version 
of the form wizard that Patrick showed during T3CON07 was very promising 
and therefore we hope to see Patrick and other developers complete this 
great feature for TYPO3 4.3.

An exciting feature for all administrators and developers is the new 
TypoScript editor with syntax highlighting. This editor will make it 
easier to get a quick overview of your code and support your work with 
TypoScript. Tobias Liebig was responsible of developing that editor and 
succeeded in delivering that very welcomed feature for TYPO3 4.2.

I myself was responsible to give the backend the new shape that it has 
now. At the beginning it was a quite tough job as many parts had to be 
rewritten or completely new created to fit our high demands on code 
quality and extensibility. Luckily other developers also were interested 
in supporting this effort and creating the new backend as you have seen 
it since TYPO3 4.2 Alpha 3.

The last of these projects - the new installer - was lead by Thomas. The 
idea for a new installer actually is not that new as the first efforts 
were made during the work on TYPO3 4.1. That timeframe shows that 
recreating such an important part of TYPO3 is not as easy as one might 
believe. At times it was lots of fun seeing Thomas and the installer 
making good progress while other times there was a long silence about 
the installer before Thomas returned with a whole load of new things. 
Late in the development of TYPO3 4.2 Thomas also got support from other 
developers. However, in the end all the support was not enough to get 
the installer finished according to the commit policy and in time for 
Beta 1 and the feature freeze. Therefore the new installer will not ship 
with TYPO3 4.2. Nevertheless this does not mean that Thomas' invaluable 
work was for nothing; we will just continue with the development of the 
new installer, get it even more polished and then ship it with TYPO3 4.3.

On behalf of the whole core team I'd like to thank Patrick, Tobias, and 
especially Thomas for the things you do. Keep on rocking!

Developer related changes

There is an important change that might affect many extensions. The 
methods in the common library t3lib_div have been equipped with PHP5 
member visibility declarations and parameter type hints. This may result 
in many errors turning up if, for example, a string or integer was 
supplied as a method parameter where an array was expected. Please watch 
the core also, as there may be places where this happens that we haven't 
found yet. Please see further down on how to report a bug. Also test 
your extensions to make sure that they aren't affected by these changes 
or that any issues that do appear get fixed.

The versions of prototype and script.acolo.us that ship with TYPO3 are 
again updated to their most recent bugfix releases. A hook has been 
introduced that makes it possible to manipulate the list of variables 
that are taken into account when creating a cHash for cached pages. 
Please be careful when using this hook as it may affect the performance 
and caching behavior of your site. Concerning this you may also want to 
read the article "The mysteries of &cHash" [1] before tampering with 
TYPO3's caching system. The performance of the caching system should 
also improve on large site as a change was implemented that allows 
making better use of MySQL's query cache. The problem was that when 
rendering a page in TYPO3 the timestamp was included in database 
queries. Since those timestamps changed with each request the queries 
also differed each time and thus MySQL's query cache could not be used. 
Now the timestamps are rounded on a per minute basis, which produces the 
same queries for a whole minute, and MySQL can thus use results from the 
query cache instead of having to execute the whole query again.

Bugs related to workspaces and MM-relations were fixed so that relations 
do not break anymore when publishing records with such relations. The 
user admin module is now available in draft workspaces, too and custom 
messages can be sent when raising changes from one stage to another.

Reminder: Raised minimum PHP version requirement

To run TYPO3 4.2beta1 you need to have at least PHP 5.2 [2]. This move 
was necessary to use language features introduced since PHP 5.0.

As always

Other then the highlighted features we also packed tons of bug fixes, 
performance improvements, enthusiasm, and love into this release. A 
special thanks for the help in making this release what it is goes to 
the core team and all engaged community developers.

Next steps to 4.2

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

The next release - if necessary - will be TYPO3 4.2 Beta2, or otherwise 
Release Candidate 1. If everything goes well and the beta proves to be 
mostly bug-free  we will be able to stick with our schedule of releasing 
the final version of TYPO3 4.2 at the end of February.

For a detailed overview of the features planned for 4.2 and their 
progress, have a look at the 4.2 Development wiki page [3], the 
bugtracker [4], and the ChangeLog [5].

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

MD5 Sums:
571fc693636bb499d130618c45d78bb7  dummy-4.2.0beta1a.tar.gz
44af7c228bae0e94119142aff2dc600b  dummy-4.2.0beta1a.zip
1f57735a08a1d717e52e261faa6ab847  typo3_src-4.2.0beta1a.tar.gz
7dc115c1a59f1835a77ac5d5c7d99220  typo3_src-4.2.0beta1a.zip
8547b7ef458b85fb7eade425e6eea2b8  typo3_src+dummy-4.2.0beta1a.zip

cheers
Ingo

[1] http://typo3.org/development/articles/the-mysteries-of-chash/
[2] http://buzz.typo3.org/people/stucki/article/leaving-php4-behind/
[3] http://wiki.typo3.org/index.php/4.2_Development
[4] http://bugs.typo3.org/
[5] 
http://typo3.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/typo3/TYPO3core/branches/TYPO3_4-2/ChangeLog?view=markup&pathrev=3094

-- 
Ingo Renner
TYPO3 Core Developer, Release Manager TYPO3 4.2