TYPO3 4.6 Release Notes

XLIFF is the new localization format natively used by TYPO3 4.6. It replaces the ll-XML file format TYPO3 was using through TYPO3 4.5 LTS. Although both formats are based on XML, XLIFF is an official localization format standardized by OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) in 2002.

Localizing TYPO3 is now easier than ever, thanks to Pootle, our new Translation Server available at translation.typo3.org. Pootle lets anyone contribute to translating TYPO3 by suggesting better texts.

In addition to a clean and easy-to-use interface, Pootle comes with advanced services such as built-in quality checks and translation memories, which helps unify the way common terms such as “Backend” or “Extension” should be translated in the many supported languages.

Finally, the Translation Server takes care of preparing ll-XML compatibility files from the native XLIFF localization files to ensure support for older versions of TYPO3.

Hierarchy of locales

TYPO3 4.6 comes with a clever fallback mechanism when a label is not found in the requested language; instead of returning the default (English) version, it allows you to define your own hierarchy of locales.

By default, French (Canada) will first use French before falling back to English. Similarly, missing labels in Brazilian Portuguese will first try to return Portuguese labels before the English ones.

This feature also accommodates completely custom fallbacks, such a swiss multilingual governmental website configured to have French, followed by German and only using English as a final option.

The new Form content element makes it easy to generate forms for your websites. It provides a Form wizard based on ExtJS to allow editors to construct forms very efficiently with intuitive drag & drop functionality and sorting methods to add and replace form elements. While working in the wizard, the editor sees the form exactly as it will be displayed in the website, a concept known as WYSIWYG — what you see is what you get.

Forms without any validation do not make much sense nowadays. For this reason, the system extension supports rich validation and filter rules, such as ensuring email addresses are entered in email fields, marking fields as required or forcing fields to contain only alpha-numeric characters. Strings can be bound to minimum and maximum lengths and username fields can be automatically converted to lower-case letters upon saving.

This new Form content element is a complete rewrite and enhancement of the Form content element you may have used in the past. It is a great step forward and also paves the way for future enhancements.

For new installations, the two security system extensions “saltedpasswords” and “rsaauth” are now automatically activated and used if the necessary server requirements are met.

Users upgrading to TYPO3 4.6 are strongly advised to manually enable these extensions in order to strengthen the security of their website.

We identified usability flaws and a number of bugs in the “new” Extension Manager available since TYPO3 4.5 LTS and fixed them before declaring the old Extension Manager obsolete and making the ExtJS-based Extension Manager the only official module to manage extensions and update localization files.

Tabs have been reorganized, and filters and commands have been moved around to better suit the traditional workflow of managing extensions.

The Language Packages tab has been enhanced to take the locale hierarchy (both built-in and user-defined) into account when localization updates are retrieved.

The Backend search has been highly optimized:

• It searches only in meaningful fields
• It does not search strings within numeric fields anymore
• It restricts search to meaningful tables
• It is no longer restricted to only the first 4 levels deep in the page tree