Recap TYPO3 Camp Munich 2024
I already attended a lot of TYPO3 events in my life and I never wrote a recap. The reason is very simple: I did not have a blog to publish them. So after years of going to TYPO3 events and loving it, this is my first review of a TYPO3 event.
And if you don't want to read the long text, I have two sentences for you
It was great, just as every TYPO3 event I ever visited was! If you did not attend any TYPO3 event yet, you should do it!
Friday #
After the Deutsche Bahn managed to bring me to Munich, the event started at Friday evening with a warmup party. Many attendees also already came to Munich one day before and the warmup location was pretty full of TYPO3 people. We had dinner, beer, cocktails and a lot of fun, meeting all the friends from previous TYPO3 events. On Saturday, there were rumors, the location ran out off beer because of us.
Saturday #
The event itself took place in the old Gasteig in Munich. After everyone got their breakfast and coffee, the event started with the session planning and it was amazing. Instead of begging and waiting for possible session topics, there was a large row of people full of ideas and presentations. There were not enough session slots for all the cards and so some of them were kept for the next day.
Session 0: The TYPO3 Teams #
Because of the large amount of sessions, the first session even took place before between the planning and the first regular session slot, because it was possible to do it in a less than the regular 45 minutes. Peter did a short presentation of all the existing TYPO3 teams which is more than only building the software. Everybody can contribute to the community and ecosystem in so many different ways.
Session 1: End-to-End Testing with Playwright #
If you read my other blog post, you know, I am very familiar with e2e testing with Codeception since a long time. I know about Codeception's advantages and strengths, but also about its disadvantages and limitations. So I took the chance to listen to Volkers experiences with "Playwright", another big player in e2e testing.
Lunch #
The lunch took place in an Italian restaurant in a stunning location, the "Müller'sches Volskbad". It was only a few minutes away from the event location.
Session 2: New APIs in TYPO3 13 #
In the afternoon, I listened Olivers presentation about all the new cool API stuff in TYPO3 13: TCA schema, more PSR-14 events, new page tree features and so on. He already held this talk at the Developer Days, but because I could not join them this year, it was a good opportunity to get an overview off the important stuff and being able to ask questions directly to a TYPO3 core team member.
Session 3: Site Sets in TYPO3 13 #
The next session, I visited, also was dedicated to the new cool stuff in TYPO3. Wolfgang showed his experiences with the site set configuration possibility, that come with TYPO3 13.
Session 4: DDEV Providers #
In the next session, André gave us some insights how he uses the DDEV providers to fill the local dev environments with data. His idea to keep a copy of the data in a GitLab instance to not need to give each developer full SSH access to the production server is really cool.
Session 5: SCSS vs CSS #
My last session of the day was not a presentation by a single speaker, but a free discussion about the question, if there are still benefits of using SCSS instead of directly writing modern vanilla CSS. The conclusion as "It depends" but in most projects without any special edge cases, vanilla CSS really provides enough cool and modern features to not need to use SCSS. So it's definitely possible to reduce the frontend pipeline complexity.
Social Party #
The social party took place in the Paulaner Brauhaus with very traditional drinks and meals. And really enough of both of them.
Sunday #
The session planning maybe was the quickest session planning, I have ever experienced at a barcamp. There were many session proposals left from the previous day. Suddenly someone asked if anybody could give some information about accessibility, so I offered to repeat my talk about a short inside how websites could be used with alternative technologies, which I already held last year at the TYPO3camp Munich 2023.
Session 1: Upgrades v4 to v12 #
In the first session of the day, Patricia presented her experiences with upgrading a project from TYPO3 4.5 LTS up to the latest TYPO3 12 LTS. - Why? Because she can! - Anyone how already had to do with such old project knows, that newer TYPO3 versions offer a lot of backwards compatibility and also come with upgrade wizards to do the necessary migrations to enable the new features.
Session 2: Fluid 4 #
For a long time, the Fluid template engine was stuck to version 2. Attempts to create a newer and more modern version 3 were at dead end. That's why some developers decided to stop that attempt and do smaller changes and improvements. This new version 4 was published some days ago and is integrated in TYPO3 13. Simon, one of the current maintainers, gave some insights into new features, future plans and also some nice backports to Fluid 2.
Lunch #
Same procedure as every day: The whole squad went over to the Rustikeria. But this time, it did not rain.
Session 3: Accessibility #
While I was preparing my presentation at short notice, I decided to not only show how websites can be used with keyboard only, with Windows' high contrast mode, and with a screen reader - as I did in the last year. I decided to also say some sentences about what WCAG is, how it is structured, which one is the current version and so on. I also wanted to warn about the usage of accessibility overlays. - Unfortunately, it turned out that I would have been able to fill more than one session.
Thankfully, I still received feedback that the talk was entertaining and informative.
Session 4: Relax and socialize #
In the last session slot, I decided to not attend one of the sessions. I preferred to relax after my own session and do a bit socializing with other attendees and organizers of the camp.
Conclusion #
Just as expected, the TYPO3camp Munich 2024 was great fun. I met awesome people, heard interesting talks and got delicious food and beer. Thanks to all organizers and sponsors for everything. I'm looking forward to next year. If you have not been to any TYPO3 event yet, you should consider to join, too.
