TYPO3 8: Good to Know & Contribute to The Next LTS

At ending of March, TYPO3 core team has announced the first version TYPO3 8 — the Next LTS. Oh, Wait a minute.. Again a new LTS version? Yes exactly, because the development was already started before many weeks ago with every 8–10 weeks a development preview (Sprint Releases) — It’s already planned to release TYPO3 8 LTS in April 2017.

One of the most important focus on providing better way to create & edit content for TYPO3 users or editors in order ‘to simplify the lives of TYPO3 Users’. Also to Cloud infrastructure (excited for looking for more information), Cleanup/optimized code & Improve UI/UX to provide for more robots & flexible CMS are also on the agenda of core developers.

Important Features of TYPO3 8 LTS

• More flexibility and simplifying for TYPO3 Users/Editors
• Cloud Integration
• Integrate new Rich Text Editor (CKEditor?)
• Code Cleanup
• Deprecation removals
• UI/UX Improvement
• Many Fixes/Patches
• Integrator Support
• Frontend Editing on Steroids

PHP 7 — Go with developer daring
The TYPO3 Core team did take one good & bold decision — TYPO3 8 will require minimum PHP 7. Yeah, It’s really meaningful steps with drop support on old PHP version which will used till TYPO3 7. With this decision, There is few arguments/against (like server/hosting did not support upgrade PHP 7 — poor guys ;) into Community. There is no-doubt — It’s long term solution & vision in terms of Technical stability.

One of the main reason is simply ‘Improve the performance’ at both frontend & backend. Right now the best result of fully cached page in frontend with fabulous 7 Milliseconds — Simply 40% faster than the same page with PHP 5.5 — Woow! Also there are many new opportunity will be achievable like Code quality & stable, Significantly reduced memory usage, AST, etc., Find out more at secure.php.net/releases/7_0_0.php

The first initial version — TYPO3 8.0

At march 22nd, The first version TYPO3 8.0 has been launched with great tag line ‘Start Your Engines’.

Performance improvement
As described at PHP 7 section ;)

UX Form builder
As already known, the new version will appear with a variety of improvements in the surface to simplify the handling. The first step makes this Sprint released the integrated Form Builder .

Independent Fluid
That’s right. Fluid, fast and reliable template engine, which is used in TYPO3 and Flow, is now independent and can be used without major dependencies in other PHP projects or other PHP frameworks (eg laravel or Symfony). In TYPO3 8 LTS is now integrated as an external dependency.

Deprecation removals
Already applied many patches & in review

The TYPO3 8.1

Today, Just announced TYPO3 8.1 with below features:

• UX: Revamped workspace module
• UX: Unified color picker
• UX: Inlined backend layout wizard
• UX: Guided tours
• Doctrine DBAL integration

Read more at typo3.org/news/article/typo3-v81-tightening-the-screws/

Planned Sprints

Support period of TYPO3 8 LTS

How could you Support/Contribute to TYPO3?

As we know, The whole TYPO3 CMS has been developed with pure spiritual community power. So, It’s time to give back to the community & let’s join it — There are many ways where you could help & support to be have next TYPO3 LTS with it’s best version ever.

• Simply donwload & install latest version of TYPO3 8.x from typo3.org/download/
• Recommend for Testing/Reviewing github.com/Tuurlijk/TYPO3.Homestead Where you could test multiple versions with multiple environments
• Join the TYPO3 Universe like typo3.slack.org, forge.typo3.org, forger.typo3.org, review.typo3.org, wiki.typo3.orgUse your local development environment with review.typo3.org
• Test core patches, improvements and newest fixes
• Write your own core patches and improvements — put them into the process
• Documentations
• Translations
• Many more…

Many thanks to the TYPO3 People who are continuously contributing for Next TYPO3 LTS — All over the world!

References / More Details:
typo3.org/news/article/typo3-v80-start-your-engines/
typo3.org/news/article/kicking-off-typo3-v8-development/
typo3.org/news/article/typo3-v81-tightening-the-screws/
typo3.org/typo3-cms/roadmap/
typo3.org/fileadmin/t3org/documents/TYPO3_Release_Agenda_LTS.pdf