Although this question is fairly old by now (I didn't see it until now) and you probably already found out more about what Fluid Powered TYPO3 offers:
The features you ask for (TV-style FCEs, low coding overhead and especially the last one which is more regarding the process than the tool) are exactly what Fluid Powered TYPO3 is all about:
- We provide simple ways to get page and content templates recognised by TYPO3 and made available to use by the site's content editors.
- We use a common API approach (which is built on top of TYPO3's TCA/TCEforms) which you can use in both page and content templates to add custom fields (as an example: create a field to set the color of the site's header or configure a content element to have a blue background, and so on).
- We use Fluid which is (as Michael already stated) a superb rendering engine.
But this is just a small part of the possibilities you have with the extensions (currently there are 20 - no, really, 20) which all provide different feature sets: there's the ViewHelper library VHS which you can use with any type of Fluid template, there's fluidpages, fluidcontent and fluidbackend which lets you place template files in a recognised path and made available to use without further hassle, there's view which lets you use overlay paths for plugin templateRootPaths (example: override only one template file from EXT:news without having to copy all template files from EXT:news). There's builder which can generate extensions, ViewHelper unit test classes, test your Fluid templates and more. There's tool which contains a range of Extbase Service-type classes that you can use in your own Extbase plugins. There's fluidwidget which is a great base for complex Fluid Widgets. You've got side utilities like *extbase_realurl* which can generate automatic realurl rules for any Extbase plugin. And there's schemaker which can let you create your own XSD schemas for your own ViewHelpers (or any version of for example fluid itself, or VHS, or flux etc.).
And there is more than this. Simply put, we offer you every tool you need to create every type of site, template or plugin. Our tools have one primary focus: efficiency.
It sounds like a huge mouthful but it isn't as complicated as it seems. Usually you will start off by using three or four of the extensions and their purpose is quite clear: Flux allows you to add the form fields which content editors use to configure content, pages and plugin instances; VHS provides a large number of multipurpose VieWHelpers to use whenever you need more than just those included with Fluid. And then one or both of fluidcontent and fluidpages which are -very- simple in that all they do is allow you to use template files as content elements or page templates.
There is quite a bit to get used to - this is true of any framework - but we spent a lot of effort on making the API the same across the line, which means anything you learn in one context (for example page templates) you can use in others (like content templates and backend modules).
If you want to save time and be consistent when creating content, pages and plugins, Fluid Powered TYPO3 (which is the umbrella name for all those twenty-something extensions) will do exactly that for you.
I can recommend taking a few minutes to read the new tour I published on fedext.net - the URL is http://fedext.net/tour/form-api.html - it primarily speaks to developers who've touched on Extbase and Fluid earlier, but even if you're used to "just" working with TYPO3 the main points should make sense.
And if you need more details than this you are welcome to find us on Github or on IRC (#typo3 on Freenet). We're always happy to help new users.
Cheers,
Claus aka. NamelessCoder
