Admittedly, the relation between FLOW3, TYPO3, PHP and the universe is not completely obvious and clear at the first glance. That's why we have compiled some of the most frequently asked questions into a list with answers.

It’s a modern open-source PHP framework released under the LGPL. It can be the foundation of almost any PHP project.

No. FLOW3 is the framework on which TYPO3 version 5 is built.

The FLOW3 framework is independent from the TYPO3 CMS. But version 5 of the TYPO3 CMS is built upon FLOW3.

The name FLOW3 was inspired by the "flow experience", a concept proposed by the hungarian psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. Flow is the mental state in which a person is fully consumed by what he or she is doing, „characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity" (Wikipedia).

We picked this name because we aim to create a framework which lets developers experience the flow while using it. Everything should be intuitive, right at hand and allow you to do what you aim for.

Simply put, the CR is the blackbox where records (pages, news items) and files are stored. From outside it looks like a kind of object database - internally it's based on relational databases like MySQL and the file system.

Note that the CR will also be TYPO3 independent but built to suit TYPO3 needs first. It doesn’t have an official name yet but is often called TYPO3 CR.

Yes, TYPO3 v5 uses the FLOW3 framework and the Content Repository, all handmade PHP. Technically the TYPO3 CMS, the CR and even FLOW3 are just FLOW3 packages (see further below).

Sure. But maybe you better join the TYPO3 community to give a hand. However, the whole PHP community is encouraged to use FLOW3 for their development.

A first fun-to-play-with snapshot of FLOW3 will be released this spring and we expect a first 1.0.0alpha before the end of Q1 in 2009. TYPO3 5.0 should be available at some point later in 2009. We don't have estimates yet for the Content Repository.

No, we don’t think so right now. TYPO3 v4 will be further developed and maintained for some years to come.

Yes, we encourage you to do so to start learning the new concepts and architecture we plan for TYPO3 v5.

TYPO3 v4 extensions are not compatible with TYPO3 v5. We are working on making that gap smaller, though:

• work is being done to create a MVC layer for TYPO3 4.x which will be almost fully compatible to FLOW3
• a new templating engine called Fluid is currently being developed which will be available for FLOW3 and TYPO3 4.x

Those projects will make it easier to develop future-proof. Combined with a modern approach to coding that strives to decouple business logic from infrastructure you can expect a reasonably easy migration to TYPO3 5.x even for code.

In TYPO3 v4, an extension is the container which contains PHP code (extending TYPO3), documentation, templates and images. In TYPO3 v5 (and FLOW3), this container is called package. If a package contains PHP code that extends TYPO3 v5, we refer to it as an "extension". There will be other packages which only contain documentation or libraries - these are not called extensions.

In line with the TYPO3 Extension Repository (TER) there will be a FLOW3 Package Repository.