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Introduction

Grid View

Since version 4.5 the TYPO3 core offers the so called grid view, a feature developed during the user experience week, that gives backend users some nice options to get a more user friendly backend layout. You can create your own table based backend layout records, fill in as many columns as you like with either a wizard or a TSconfig like code and arrange these columns to match your desired layout, so backend users will easily recognize where to put their content. Each record can get an icon that will be used as with the layout selector box. Code can be stored and versioned in files as well.

Grid Elements are pushing these features to the next level, namely content elements.

You will get pretty much the same backend layout records, again created with a wizard or by hand. By assigning such a layout to a Grid Element, you can enable a table based structure for this element, which is becoming a container this way. This container is offering different cells for your content elements , which can of course be Grid Elements as well. Setting up nested structures is a breeze this way. Each record can get a second icon that will be used for the detailed description within the new content element wizard. Additionally CE backend layouts can contain a flexform to add lots of different features, like form based select boxes and switches to control the frontend output of a grid elements based on this layout later on.

Another usability improvement of Grid Elements is the drag and drop behavior added to the page module. You can drag elements between different columns within the page or element grid. Drop an element to move it or make a copy by pressing the CTRL-key while dropping. You can drag in new content elements from a new content element wizard overlay, that can be activated by the add new content element button on top of the page module. You can create references to content elements on the same or another page with icons appearing on top of each column as soon as an element is available from the normal clipboard. And of course you can have the so called unused elements as well, by simply adding a column with colPos -2 to your page grid.

A short roundup of the features and advantages

  • Completely TypoScript based backend layout
  • Allowed and (brandnew) disallowed content types, list types and grid types as well as maximum items per column configurable via wizard or TypoScript
  • Comfortable point and click wizard to create backend layout structures and assign columns and allowed content types
  • Completely XML- and CSV-less normalized relations between containers and elements
  • Flexforms used for configurational stuff only, can be derived from existing data structures
  • Original colPos and sorting fields still working
  • Grid and backend layout aware list module with top level sorting that can list children of containers as nested list via AJAX
  • Top level layouts to exclude certain types of Grid Elements from being used within other Grid Elements
  • Drag & drop move and copy actions for the page module
  • Get me a copy from another page icon so you won’t have to switch pages when fetching content
  • New content element wizard overlay to drag in new content elements
  • Paste icons for pasting copies and references into grid columns
  • References to complete pages can be used within the reference element
  • Referenced content visible in the preview section of the reference element
  • Completely TypoScript or Fluid based frontend output
  • Flexform field values automatically added to the data set
  • Prerendered content and arrays added to the data set to be used even with other templating engines like Smarty or Fluid
  • No need for HTML templates and mapping to get a backend layout and/or frontend output
  • Completely based on hooks without XCLASSing (only exception is the list module due to missing hooks)

Some of you might be used to similar features of TemplaVoila and ask themselves why they should be using grid elements instead. If you want to know more details, check out the FAQ section to find some answers