TYPO3 Core

Much of the complexity of typo3 for an ordinary editor (not the geek) is the mix between sys-folders / list-view / records / content elements / edit-mode.

There have been discussions about this before but it's as of 6.1 still an issue.

Currently, the following inconsistencies exist:

• Sys-folders can be displayed in the backend in edit mode like normal pages <> But they can not be displayed in the Frontend (preview), even if they contain content
• Sys-folders mostly contain records, many of them are not visible in edit-mode, user has to manually switch to list-view. Very hard to explain.
• Sys-folders have Preview Icons (And the Preview-Module), and records inside sysfolders have "save and preview" Icons <> But they can not be displayed in the Frontend

There are some "explanations" why it is as it is, but in the grand-cheme, they don't make sense for 90% of the use-cases.

I see two possible solutions:
1) Use Sysfolders as pure Record storage:

• Remove all Preview-Icons
• Automatically Switch to Listview (could be disabled or a if anyone uses a folder to inherit content-elements to children, but then again, don't use a sysfolder as container for pages)

2) Don't enforce this strict separation:

• Consequently, sys-folders then need to be able to be displayed in the fronted
• (I would still prefer an automatic switch to list-view with the possibility of manually switching back to edit edit mode)

Listing of all records:
I have to following use-case for this: A course extension collects registrations in a sys-folder. Now; if the editor clicks on preview, the folder could be rendered as a normal page (using the TS that is probably present some levels above anyway, or its own custom TS that handles this page) and list all registrations (using the a plugin inserted in the edit-mode as content) allowing for various cool stuff like printing of invoices etc...
It could be so that the sys-folders can only be previewed by backend-editors effectively making the backend much more versatile for extension since they can use the same way to display stuff in the front-end for the normal user as well as for advanced backend things for the author – he just writes another plugin only used on the sys-folder... no need to hack tca, write wizzards...)

Preview of a single record:
If you click preview on a recorcd, the record ID is used and the Sysfolder is previewd using the Template, if a plugin is inserted on the sysfolders content-section, it's automatically used to preview the current record. This would even be better, since now, there is no way of previewing records. Example: sysfolder storing tt_news records. Now add a detail_display plugin in the content-area and upon hitting "save & preview" the Record ID and the Sysfolder-ID are rendered in the FE as Page > voila, preview of the current news.

I think, this would be a great usability improvement because it increases consistency and, in case of option 2 also a great new feature for editors and extensionprogrammers.