Magento 2.3

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 all kinds.

Magento 2 provides a range of interesting functions and new technologies for online store operators and their customers. Magento is available both in the commercial Magento Commerce version, distributed by Adobe, as well as in the free Magento Open Source version.

The latest version of Magento 2.3 runs under the version number Magento 2.3.5 and offers the functions listed below.

Magento 2.3 reached End-Of-Life on 8.9.2022 and development was completed. The current version of Magento is 2.4. Changes and features for Magento 2.4 can be found here.

Magento 2.3 already comes with a solid basic set of functions for operating an online store in its basic installation.

If you also 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.

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

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

Inventory links these stock sources to distribution channels (websites) to provide an accurate saleable quantity, calculates available and in-stock products, takes into account pending orders (reservations) and configured thresholds.

Inventory management also updates ordering and shipping options so that you have full control over your inventory and issues at stock location level.

Improvements to Magento Warehouse and Inventory Management in version 2.3.5 include:

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

With Magento 2, control mechanisms were also established which make it possible to make customer-specific content cacheable via the browser control on the part of Magento. Private content is 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 browser's cache, thus increasing performance, such as in the customer area (after login).

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

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

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

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 ofContent 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 known session_id from URLs. The disclosure of session id values in URLs creates a potential security vulnerability in the form of session fixation.

Note: Since the release of Magento 2.3.2, security vulnerabilities have been assigned and published using CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) numbers, with 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 severity.

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 version, Magento 2.3.x 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.
• Symfonycomponents 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 the transition from the Zend Framework to the Linux Foundation's Laminas project.
• Deprecation of payment provider plugins: The following payment provider integrations, which were previously part of the Magento core, have been marked as "deprecated" and will be removed by Magento with version 2.4.0. The payment methods Authorize.Net,
• eWay, CyberSource and Worldpay have been classified 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 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.

Magento 2 comes with the 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, quick accessibility of your e-commerce store even in poor network conditions, offline mode, responsiveness, app-like appearance, engaging user experience, push notifications and much more.

PWA Studio 6.0 is now available with Magento 2.3.5. PWA Studio 6.0.0 includes new features as well as improvements to existing features:

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

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 offered by Klarna's integration with Magento.

Even if you have an independent e-commerce store, online retailers cannot afford to ignore Amazon. Amazon is enjoying a steadily growing market share. By integrating your online store with Amazon, you can take advantage of the e-commerce giant's extensive experience.

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

With Magento 2.3.5, hundreds of minor improvements and bug fixes have been released. Below we list the most important corrections at headline level only: Adobe Stock integration, Bundleable products, Shopping cart rules based on payment types, various Magento admin panel fixes, and much more. Read the full list of bug fixes in the Magento 2.3.5 release notes here.