DEPRECATION WARNING

This documentation is not using the current rendering mechanism and is probably outdated. The extension maintainer should switch to the new system. Details on how to use the rendering mechanism can be found here.

Introduction

What does it do?

The extension "fluid_styled_content" handles the rendering of the default set of content elements shipped with the core by using the template engine "fluid".

"fluid_styled_content" provides a basic set of content elements which you can use for your website. These can be used out-of-the-box, but can be adapted to your or your client needs. You are not bound to using only these content elements. For custom made functionality it is possible to add extra content elements to the basic set. How to adapt, enhance or add content elements will be described in this document.

The rendering of the provided set of content elements is based on HTML5. Nowadays most of the websites are built with this core technology markup language used for structuring and presenting content in the World Wide Web. If your website is using another markup, like HTML4 or XHTML, it is easy to exchange the provided templates with your own.

A little bit of history

At the beginning of TYPO3 CMS content elements were rendered by the static template called content (default). This was mainly based on font-tags for styling and tables for positioning which was needed to achieve the visual constructions in old versions of web browsers.

Some time later the extension "css_styled_content" was introduced, which focused on reducing the amount of TypoScript and providing XHTML/HTML5 markup which could be styled by Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a style sheet language used for describing the look and formatting of a document written in a markup language. Still this extension was heavily based on TypoScript and did allow custom modifications up to some point.

Since the introduction of the templating engine Fluid, more websites are using this for page templating. Newer TYPO3 CMS packages (extensions) are also using Fluid as their base templating engine. The content elements which were provided with TYPO3 CMS by default were still using TypoScript and partly PHP code.

Since TYPO3 CMS version 7.5 the default content elements have been moved to this extension fluid_styled_content, also using Fluid as their templating engine. The benefits are that hardly any knowledge of TypoScript is needed to make changes. Integrators can easily exchange the base content element Fluid templates with their own. In Fluid more complex functionality that exceed the simple output of values has to be implemented with ViewHelpers. Every ViewHelper has its own PHP class. Several basic ViewHelpers are provided by Fluid. When using your own Fluid templates, developers can add extra functionality with their own ViewHelpers, extending the possibilities of the content elements.

Support

Please see/report problems on TYPO3 Forge https://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3cms-core/issues under category content rendering.

You may get support in the use of this extension by subscribing to https://forum.typo3.org/index.php/f/41/ .