Magento 2 - Online Shop

Magento 2 is more than just a further development of the successful eCommerce system Magento 1. Rather, the Magento developer community has created a completely new platform for selling products of any kind.

Magento 2 delivers a number of interesting features and new technologies for online store operators and for their customers. Magento is available in both the commercial Magento Commerce version, distributed by Adobe, and the free Magento Open Source version.

The latest version of Magento 2 runs under the version number Magento2.3.5 and offers the features listed below.

Magento 2 Extensions, Modules and Extensions

Magento 2 already comes with a solid basic set of functions for operating an online store in its basic installation.

If you want to expand your online store, add functions or modules, or even implement completely different, new applications, you can currently (as of 05/2020) access around 4,000 extensions via the Magento Marketplace.

Nearly 9,000 additional extensions and developments are also available free of charge on the code hosting platform Github.

Magento 2.3.5

Inventory Management - Improvement for Inventory Management

Magento Inventory Management is available with Magento Open Source from version 2.3.x. Merchants can use Inventory Management to manage inventory for all product types in a single warehouse location or across complex shipping networks. Manage locations or even suppliers as sources and track available inventory quantities per product and per warehouse and supplier.

Inventory links these stock sources to distribution channels (sites) to provide accurate saleable quantity, calculates available and in-stock products, accounts for pending orders (reservations) and configured thresholds.

Inventory management also updates order and shipping options, giving you full control over your inventory and outbound at warehouse location levels.

Magento warehouse and inventory management enhancements in version 2.3.5 include:

  • New enhancement point for SourceDataProvider and StockDataProvider.
  • The ability to display assigned inventory sources in the order list

Magento 2 - Inventory Management
Magento 2 - Inventory Management

Magento performance improvement

Improvements to the invalidation logic for customer data areas

With Magento 2, control mechanisms were also established, which make it possible to also make customer-specific content cacheable via the control of the browser on the part of Magento. Private Content represents the concept for this. With Magento 2.3.5, this area has been revised, so that individual content can now also be stored in the cache of the browser and thus the performance increases, such as the customer area (after successful login).

    Redis cache performance optimizations

    Magento 2 has always relied on the use of a Redis cache to store and retrieve session data and caches in a high-performance manner. In old Magento 1 instances, this had to be laboriously integrated manually.

    The improvements with version 2.3.5 minimize the number of queries to Redis that are made for each Magento request. These optimizations include:

    • Reduction of data transfers between Redis and Magento.
    • Reducing Redis consumption of CPU cycles by improving the ability of the Magento Redis adapter to automatically determine what needs to be loaded and what does not.
    • Reduction of race conditions during Redis write operations.

    Security enhancements

    With Magento 2.3.5, over 25 security enhancements have been released to help close remote code execution (RCE) and cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities.

    The implementation of content security policies(CSP). Magento 2.3.5 includes a number of powerful new security tools for Magento installations. Content Security Policies (CSP) provide additional layers of defense by helping to detect and mitigate cross-site scripting (XSS) and related data injection attacks.

    Magento has now removed the well-known session_id from URLs. Exposing session id values in URLs creates a potential security vulnerability in the form of session fixing.

    Note: Already since the release of Magento 2.3.2, security vulner abilities are assigned and published based on CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) numbers, specifying each security flaw reported to external parties. This will allow Magento Commerce users to more easily identify unaddressed vulnerabilities in their deployment and also more easily assign the severe ones.

    Platform upgrades

    Magento is known for integrating and supporting various third-party platforms, payment providers and other standard components out of the box. These modules are also updated as part of the regular system upgrades. In Magento 2.3.5, the following platforms have been updated as listed below:

    • Elasticsearch 7.x:
      • Support for Elasticsearch 7.x. Elasticsearch 7.x is now the supported catalog search engine for both Magento Commerce and Magento Open Source. With this release, Magento 2.3.x now only supports Elasticsearch 6.x and 7.x. Elasticsearch 2.x and 5.x are now deprecated for Magento 2.3.x and will be removed in Magento 2.4.0.
    • Symfony components to the latest version with lifetime support (4.4). Symfony components are a set of decoupled PHP libraries used by the Magento framework.
    • Migration of Zend Framework dependencies to the Laminas project to ensure transition from Zend Framework to the Linux Foundation's Laminas project.
    • Deprecation of payment provider plugins: the following payment provider integrations, which were previously part of Magento Core, have been marked as "deprecated" and will thus be removed by Magento with version 2.4.0. The payment methods Authorize.Net,
    • eWay, CyberSource and Worldpay have been marked as deprecated. If you want to continue using them, it is recommended to use the plugins officially developed and supported by the payment providers from the Magento Marketplace.
    • The Google Shopping Ads Channel extension has reached the end-of-life with Magento 2.3.5 and is no longer supported by Magento itself. It is therefore recommended to use an extension from the Magento Marketplace.

    Progressive Web Apps - PWA Studio 6.0

    Magento 2 comes with Magento PWA Studio, which allows you to easily design your e-commerce store as a progressive web app. Magento PWA Studio offers faster loading time, fast accessibility of your e-commerce store even in poor network conditions, offline mode, responsiveness, app-like appearance, responsive user experience, push notifications and much more.

    With Magento 2.3.5, PWA Studio 6.0 is now available. PWA Studio 6.0.0 includes both new features and improvements to existing features:

    • Introduction of the PWA extension framework. This framework gives developers the ability to create an extensibility API for their store front end, or write plugins that can access this API and change the logic for your store front end.
    • Caching and data retrieval improvements.
    • Shopping cart components that can be used for a full page shopping cart experience.

    New payment method

    Magento 2 is integrated with Klarna, which improves the shopping experience. Instant checkout, easy returns, the ability for the customer to split the payment into multiple parts are some of the benefits that the integration of Klarna with Magento offers.

    Buy it now

    It makes it easier for returning customers to reduce the pozess to checkout. The fields are filled in automatically based on the information stored in the customer account. The Buy Now button appears below the Add to Cart option on each product page.

    New features and supports

    • Clearer backend which is now Responsive and completely redesigned.
    • Support for Google AdWords in Magento 2 makes it easier to manage ads on Google.
    • YouTube videos can now be embedded easily.
    • Integration of PayPal, Payflow, Braintree and Billsafe purchase on account.
    • Users who are currently online can be displayed in the backend.

    Magento technology improvements

    • Magento 2 now officially supports PHP 7.0.2 without patches, allowing the store to run much faster.
    • Magento 2 still uses Zend Framework 1, but there are already some ZF2 modules.
    • With built-inFull Page Cache, Magento 2 provides a better solution around caching than before.
    • By connecting to newrelic.com, performance analysis can be done.
    • The use of Symfony increases the performance in Magento enormously.

    Backend - Similar structure, yet improved

    • Working in the backend is easier with a vertical menu.
    • Due to the support also on mobile devices it can be controlled without problems on all devices.
    • The design has been completely revised and kept in flat design.
    • The structure of the dashboard has remained the same.
    • The robots.txt can now be edited via the backend.