There’s a lot of buzz recently regarding the release of Magento2 beta, so we thought why not give a brief overview of the interesting changes that are made in the Magento2 platform. This article gives the list of the changes which we thought may be interesting for Developers and Merchants alike. Please let us know what you think about these changes.
Magento 2 is using modern technology stack:
The minimum PHP version required is 5.4.11. PHP 5.4.x have improved performance and exception handling. You can get the list of new features in the following URL;
http://php.net/manual/en/migration54.new-features.php
The minimum MySQL requirement is 5.6. MySQL 5.6 has a host of new features with improved query performance, better performance monitoring, memcached API, etc. You can check the list of new features in the following URL;
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/whats-new-in-mysql-5.6.html
Use of HTML5 and CSS3 will help in performance enhancement, improved layout design, better performing animation, more SEO friendly etc. You can check the performance features of HTML5 in the following URL;
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/features/performance
The Javascript library used in Magento2 is jQuery, prototype.js is not used anymore.
In Magento2 the coding standard being followed is PSR Coding Standard. You can find more about the PSR Coding Standard in the following URL;
http://www.php-fig.org/psr/psr-1/
Key changes in Magento 2:
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Mage” God class has been broken down into many smaller ones. Removing the “Mage” god class was an important decision, because it will reduce Code coupling in Magento making third party modules/extensions more independent of each other, which was a major concern in Magento 1. Thus in Magento 2 we will be getting extensions which will not conflict with each other unlike Magento 1.X.
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Developers will be able to customize core classes in Magento without rewriting the whole class. Thus customizations will be more compatible with extensions resulting in less errors during upgrade. Upgrade from Magento 2 to Magento 2.X and from Magento Community to Magento Enterprise will be much easier. Merchants on a current Magento 1.X platform can upgrade to Magento 2 by first exporting all standard records, including customer records, product catalog, customer data, and inventory data, and then importing these records into Magento 2.
The export/import functionality cannot be applied to theme customizations that are made in the current platform, since the theme structure in Magento 2 is different. These themes will need to be recreated in Magento 2. This also applies to extensions that are built on the current platform; extensions are non-transferrable to Magento 2, and any extensions or code customizations will need to be reconfigured in Magento 2.
Introduction of Web Hook and Web API frameworks will make external business system integration easier.
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Magento’s fallback hierarchy has been redefined to produce unlimited theme inheritance. New theme layouts can easily overwrite elements of inherited theme.
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The need to invest in additional server has been eliminated by the implementation of full page caching, which significantly improves performance and reduces server load.
Out-of-the-box integration with Varnish Cache, makes pages faster to display and reduces server load by caching common requests.
[fontawesome icon=”angle-right” circle=”yes” size=”small” iconcolor=”” circlecolor=”” circlebordercolor=”” flip=”” rotate=”” spin=”no” animation_type=”0″ animation_direction=”down” animation_speed=”0.1″ alignment=”left” class=”” id=””]Quality improvement:
Testing framework in Magento 2 has been significantly improved. Magento 2 includes a pre-packaged series of test scripts for users to leverage and incorporate into their development cycle and testing practice. This series includes tests for integration, units, static environments, functional areas, and performance criteria. As a result of the automated testing tools, users can determine the impact of code changes at various stages of site implementation, and manual testing efforts are significantly reduced. The testing framework also supports continuous integration and testing practices to enable faster development and less time spent on QA.
That’s a brief overview of the changes. Please let us know what you think about them. Will it reduce the cost for Merchants and improve coding standards of developers?
