Extension containing the general purpose ViewHelpers from FED along with a collection of new ViewHelpers. And a note about future strategies.
Dear developers,
Many of the people I have spoken to through the years expressed that it seemed like a lot to install FED if what you really wanted to use was the ViewHelpers. I listened - and the result is EXT:vhs.
This new extension contains all the general purpose ViewHelpers from FED (which means that the ViewHelpers that require additional resources and configuration have been left out - such as the jQuery Accordion, Map and Table ViewHelpers). A lot of additional ViewHelpers have been added which fit the "general purpose" label; you can find a <link internal-link internal link in current>full reference of the new ViewHelpers here. And <link https: github.com namelesscoder vhs external-link-new-window external link in new>the collection is growing.
Not a single one of the ViewHelpers require anything but Fluid. This means you can use them in any context - anywhere from FLUIDTEMPLATE templates to Extbase plugin templates. There is zero TCA, zero TS and zero DB changes when installing the extension.
This also means that I will stop maintaining the FED ViewHelpers that have now been ported to VHS. Maintenance of those ViewHelpers will only continue in VHS - but the FED versions will of course remain in place for a good, long while. When they do get scheduled for removal this will be made very clear and given a long warning.
Future strategy
In the future when adding ViewHelpers and Widgets the following strategy will be used:
The end result is that FED will be much less about ViewHelpers and much more about the underlying logic: providing reusable Services and integrations between TYPO3 and Extbase/Fluid. VHS will be all about ViewHelpers and Fluidwidget will be all about Widgets. Things like the Extbase Realurl integration will most likely, as was done with that particular feature, be created as standalone extensions whenever this makes sense (which I expect will be in cases where FED does not necessarily need to be a dependency).
I also expect to decouple the Fluid Content Element features from FED and move them over into EXT:fluidcontent. It makes sense given the name - and the fact that the feature is built almost entirely on the logic that has now been moved to Flux. If this will happen, it will only happen along with a major version increase in FED. There is currently no such plan for the Fluid Page feature - but the circumstances are very similar; this feature could also potentially be decoupled completely from FED since it too builds almost entirely on Flux.
Cheers,
Claus