30.000 feet above the ground in this setting is
normally far away from home. But today is different. Today my laptop
screen fits in between me and the seat in front. It’s wider and less
tall than usual. It’s glowing white in the cabin. It’s the forbidden
fruit someone took a byte of; yes, I’m a heretic. I don’t know if I’m
actually flying with my Powerbook or SAS! But this I know; my Mac
feels good! It spoils me, works for me, almost thinks for me. Ahh,
pleasant freedom, less thinking, less debugging, less compiling. I’m
sorry I gave in, I need comfort now, I’m past 30.

Today we are at a historical point in
time. I never thought I would say it. Yet, with only mild moderation,
the truth is that TYPO3 is feature complete. I just can’t think of
anything more to put into the core. Yes, there will always be demand
for new features as the web evolves and customers mature. But the far
majority can be implemented as extensions – and this is exactly how
the community has responded in the last three years, resulting in the
completely unmanageable success of the Extensions Repository; A
problem but a positive one. And then of course we have seen various
borderland applications of TYPO3 pointing to future challenges
calling for a modernized architecture; object oriented design,
improved APIs, universal patterns applied, new permission management,
better bridging of frontend and backend etc. The amazing thing is
that this leaves us exactly where our roadmap from 2005 placed us on
the map: With a plan for version 4.5 and 5.0 which fits reality. I
couldn’t be more happy.

But what’s up with the ease-of-use
improvements in version 4.5? We always followed an ideal when
developing TYPO3. The ideal was the perfect code. The sacrifice was
the user experience. The logic was to lay foundations of the house
before applying wallpaper and furniture. The point was to do what was
right and not sell out to market pressure. But should we really deny
our users a great interface experience in TYPO3? An experience that
feels good without compromising our great and long tradition for
power. It’s time to spoil them!

It’s important that the whole community
gets involved in this process. The point of version 4.5 is not to
change for the sake of change but to make TYPO3 a better tool for
everyone using it daily. I assume lots of people will fear changes
that makes complex jobs harder to do – or which require them to
introduce new habits. I’m pretty sure we can’t avoid that completely,
but it will make a huge difference whether we collaborate broadly or
not in the development of the next release. The first question we
must ask ourselves is; What is our (interface) identity? Maybe you
can help to mould the answer if you reflect on why you like TYPO3.
What are our core attributes that you love and we therefore can’t miss
out on?

My Mac-purchase and version 4.5 is not
such a coincidence. As a personal primer the Mac is an educational
experience that teaches me two things; firstly how it feels being a
beginner and secondly how well beginners can be guided into a system
with higher levels of complexity under the surface. At the time of
this writing it is still quite unsure exactly how the usability
improvements will look like and, unlike any previous development of
TYPO3, I expect this challenge to include mostly non-technical resources from the TYPO3 community.

An effective
improvement of usability requires more than wild guesses from
developers but analysis and testing far before a single line of code
is written. But what does Mr. TYPO3 actually know about usability?
After all I created a system that was perfectly usable for myself.
Luckily, today there are hundreds of stars shining in the TYPO3
galaxy and our combined resources will make it possible.

Jointly, we will enable
people to communicate!

Kasper Skårhøj