What’s new with Magento 2.3 release? All the new features you need to know

Ever since the announcement in April 2018 about the next major release of Magento, the developer community is excited about the platform. It is a leading open source e-commerce platform which is written in PHP.

The latest version, Magento 2.3, will bring important and effective functionalities, features and improvements, to make the lives of developers easier. Along with new features, there will be security updates and support for PHP 7.2.

Another reason why users are waiting for the new release is because the previous release too had brought new ways to improve user experience, smoother navigation, and more.

If you too have been waiting for the latest Magento release, then you should be knowing what new features and functionalities it will bring. Having said that, let’s have a closer look at them.

 

PWA Studio

Last year, Magento had announced that it was working on PWA Studio. The company is releasing the efforts with Magento 2.3.

PWA (Progressive Web App) Studio consists a number of tools which will allow developers to develop, deploy and maintain progressive web apps.

The PWA is an application that have access to web. These apps bring the advantages of modern web technologies to devices where those features couldn’t be made available easily. Progressive web apps load in no time even in conditions of poor connectivity. These have smooth animations, and respond faster to user interactions.

Developers build these apps by coding at the front-end with a JavaScript framework which is different from the coding at back-end of application.

Magento PWA Studio will be available as an open source project on GitHub, allowing contributions and collaboration from developers. Developers will be able to setup a Venia Storefront environment using PWA Buildpack tools and Peregrine components.

 

PageBuilder

Magento 2.3 will feature a new PageBuilder that will allow users to customize the look and feel of their storefront by easily dragging and dropping the visual content. It wouldn’t require users to be expert in writing HTML or CSS. This means that users who don’t have expertise in coding will also be able to build web pages using the editing tool.

 

GraphQL API

Also coming to the latest Magento release is GraphQL API, which will work as an alternative to REST and SOAP web APIs for front-end development.

GraphQL is the data query language which was developed by social media giant Facebook. It will allow users to define data structure as per the requirement, and server will return only the data requested by users. The GraphQL modules will include a schema which will outline the syntax for queries supported by module. It will also contain attributes which can be returned.

For example, if developers run a REST call on a product, they get around a hundred lines of data from system. It can sometimes be unnecessary for users if they want just a single data. GraphQL will come to the rescue in such cases, by providing individual data against the query.

 

Declarative Schema

New version will feature declarative schema to simplify the procedure of installation and upgrade for Magento and extensions. The company aims to minimize the requirement for many database scripts, by removing the need to manage these scripts.

Another advantage of declarative schema is that it will allow Magento to release upgrades to database schema in patch releases, which isn’t possible with current versions. Declarative schema will also support split and shared database structures, and database structure validation.

 

MultisSource Inventory (MSI)

MultiSource Inventory will allow website owners to maintain and manage physical inventory for all locations in Magento. They will be able to denote multiple locations or sources for physical inventory.

Further, MultiSource Inventory will enable them to group the sources into stocks for building inventory pools. These inventory sources can be defined for one or more sites.

On the basis of sources, the users will be able to manipulate the inventory. Magento will also offer an API for source operations. It will help users to personalize inventory actions or third-party order management systems. This step will allow users to automate the repetitive actions and save time.

 

Enhanced content management system

Several enhancements have been made to the content management system (CMS) of Magento for better user experience. Users will be able to build banner content in native Magento WYSIWYG and Page Builder. In fact, Magento is using the term ‘dynamic block’ rather than ‘banner’ in the product interface.

WYSIWYG editor has been updated to use TinyMCE 4.6. The company mentioned that it has integrated the TinyMCE into Magento using an adapter. The adapter will let users replace TinyMCE with any other WYSIWYG editor.

 

Stronger security

To eliminate accidental changes that might negatively impact performance of the system, the cache flush ACL will now allow granular access to cache management settings. Further, the cache flush ACL will enable website owners to take control of which administrative users can clear site caches.

For protection of admin panel, Magento 2.3 will use 2FA/CAPTCHA. It will prevent attackers to steal passwords and provide protection against bots.

 

Improvements to core product

Other than the features and enhancements mentioned above, updates have been to Magento tech stack. These include support for upgraded PHP, Redis, and MySQL. Magento 2.3 will be compatible with PHP 7.2.

Improvements have been made to existing import and export processes, and to release packaging. This will accelerate the test automation, and provide faster and more efficient release process.

Magento Community version will now support Elasticsearch, which was previously available with Magento Commerce version only. The Elasticsearch is a Lucene library-based search engine that provides a distributed and multitenant-capable full-text search engine.

 

Wrapping up:

Now that you know what’s new is coming with Magento 2.3 release, it might become a little harder for you to wait for it, especially if you are a Magento developer or a merchant.

Thanks to the Magento core team, a lot of better things are coming to the platform. Which new functionality or feature in latest Magento version excite you the most? Let us know in the comments section below.