Forging Grid Elements

Author Jo Hasenau
Track Communication - Marketing
Session type Talk (45 minutes)
Long Abstract In 2009 we had the TYPO3 User Experience Week (T3UXW), where a team of 30 selected developers, designers and project managers paved the way for lots of new TYPO3 features. The event was sponsored partly by companies and individuals of the TYPO3 community, who paid for food and accomodation and partly by the companies who sent manpower for free. Things like the new page tree, the introduction package, the new extension manager and backend layouts have been kickstarted and were implemented into the following versions of TYPO3.

In 2011 there were some ideas on how to improve the new backend layout feature, that had been introduced with TYPO3 4.5, so that people would be able to do create things like the Flexible Content Elements known from TemplaVoila. Nearly at the same time Ben, as our community manager and Danny Sieler, the manager of a large TYPO3 based project we are currently working on at T-Systems Germany asked us, if it was possible to create content elements based on backend layouts.

For Ben it was just the logical consequence to the existing backend layouts and for T-Systems there was a real demand to get rid of TemplaVoila due to several technical reasons. So we agreed on having an official TYPO3 v4 project on forge.typo3.org. The main part of the development would be done by paid consultants of the T-Systems team backed by the community regarding security reviews, testing and additional features.

The result of these efforts is the new grid elements extension that has been released in September 2011 and is now actively developed by a team of more than 10 people.

In our talk we will show you how community driven sponsoring created the base for grid elements, how paid development pushed it to the next level and how voluntary community work improved security, added new features and helped streamlining the code. You will get some technical insight to the T-Systems project and the reasons why we had to replace TemplaVoila and we will present some numbers, so that you will get an idea about the monetary value of an extension like grid elements.
SlideShare URL
Links http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v4-gridelements

Speaker(s)

Jo Hasenau

Jo Hasenau

Coming from a Designer's background I started with TYPO3 in 2002

Today I am:
Well known TypoScript Wizard
TYPO3 Trainer & Coach
External Senior Consultant at T-Systems
Author of O'Reilly's TYPO3 Kochbuch, which is unfortunately still not translated yet but might be worth to be rewritten for TYPO3 6.0

And our company Cybercr@ft Media Manufactory is
Active TYPO3 Core Contributor
Extension Developer
Workbench for TYPO3 and other agencies

Rocco Georgi

Rocco Georgi

I am half of PavingWays Ltd., have a 10+ years background as a web developer and since 2006 I focus on mobile application development and TYPO3.

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