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Created by Thomas Mayer@thomas303

Let TYPO3 CMS releases go green if supported by ANY version of the extension

What do you suggest?

In search results, a TYPO3 CMS release turns green if it is supported by the latest version of an extension.

Auswahl_352

Auswahl_359

Instead, releases of TYPO3 CMS should go green if supported by any release of an extension

Why?

If older releases of TYPO3 CMS are supported by older versions of an extension, there is no distinction to an extension which never supported a TYPO3 CMS release. Either the user gets confused for no reason or the user has to request every TER detail page for every entry shown in the search result to see if an old release of TYPO3 has ever been supported or not.

Add a use case

Use case: For metaseo, we have

  • metaseo 3.0.0 for TYPO3 CMS 8 LTS
  • metaseo 2.1.0 for TYPO3 CMS 6.2 LTS - 7 LTS

We're maintaining a separate branch for 3.0.0, just because it was more or less painful to support 6.2 and 8 LTS in one version of the extension. And because we still need to support PHP 5.x for 7.6 and did not want to stuck with PHP 5.x (and even 5.3 for 6.2) for another 3 years.

Especially for the search it would be great to let any release of TYPO3 go green if only it was supported by any version of the extension. IMO, there is no practical use to show up the latest version number anyways because it's more or less meaningless to a user who searches for a new extension (number of downloads in past 12 months would be a much better metric).

Implication

This issue implies that the search result should not be version specific. I also see no reason to have the search results to be specific to a particular version because

  • Version information is meaningless to a user searching for a new extension (which I assume is the purpose of the search page)
  • The download link itself is also available in the detail TER page. That's one click away and goes along with the user's working process to first decide which extension to use and then decide which version applies (eventually beneficial when using an older release of TYPO3).
  • Do users still use the manual download feature (...for serious stuff) now that we have composer and also still have EM's own software distribution without manual download?

Plus, would it free up some space when the download link gets removed in search results. It could be used to display more entries and avoid some scrolling.

Positive side effect: When downloading is possible via TER detail page only, would more users eventually discover that there is a manual and a source repository in place.

Optional

If the download button in search results is not removed: The download button could also be non-version-specific and just point to the TER detail page instead of initiating the download itself.

Edited by Thomas Mayer