With the Developer Beta being available since the 17th of December (a day earlier than planned!), the 18th hosted a webinar complimenting the Magento 2 Developer Beta release. Here’s a summary.
“The Marketing Stuff”
The Unnamed Merchant Success Story. Click to enlarge
The webinar started off with some figures rationalizing picking Magento for your ecommerce project. Figures included Magento usage (#1 ecommerce platform in top 100K Alexa sites), impressive statistics on Black Friday for an unnamed merchant on Magento 1.X (see right) and a graph showcasing how open source alternatives are often more popular (Linux, Android & Magento).
This time with a different graphic, the intro talk included the already well covered platform capabilities/goals of Magento 2, the Magento 2 roadmap and a shout-out to all those who have already contributed to Magento 2.
Additionally, clear highlight was given to stimulate people to contribute to Magento 2.
The Big Question
The big question “Is Magento 2 Ready?” can shortly be answered as: for developers kind of but definitely not for merchants. Developers are advised to start diving into the platform but recommended is to not start migrating extensions just yet; there might still be breaking changes. Migrating extensions should ideally be postponed until the Release Candidate in Q1 2015.
For merchants, the answer is simply no. This is a developer beta. Testimony to this is that all online payment methods have been disabled.
Magento 2 Developer Hub
This webinar introduced the Magento 2 Developer Hub. It hosts official documentation, blog posts, video tutorials and all kinds of information useful to developers (timeline, upcoming events et cetera).
Magento U Training
Magento U courses for Magento 2 are expected to be ready in March 2015 and it is noted that the developer hub should be kept an eye on for updates. No word about new certifications, yet.
Magento 2 Developer Documentation
Already silently available on Github, during the webinar the new Magento 2 developer documentation was glossed over. Interesting is that each and every page in the documentation is directly available on Github which allows for easy contribution and running own instances of the documentation platform.
Plans to “really” use Github. Click to enlarge
“Real” GitHub
Earlier we wrote about how Magento isn’t really open source. That opinion-piece is getting less and less relevant as Magento 2 is planning to “really” use Github. This means transparent commits, PRs directly getting merged and proper attribution.
Overheard is that all of this will be put into action next week, but the first “real” commit has already been pushed.
New Magento Connect
A new Magento Connect is on its way. It should help with improving discoverability of extensions, making life easier for vendors and highlighting quality extensions through a verification program. The timeline for improvements to the current Connect and introduction of the “New Connect” looks as follows:
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It’s also more and more likely that the new Connect will be Composer backed. Also interesting to hear in light of the recent Connect episode is that there will be systems put in place to protect intellectual property.
Service Contracts
What followed was a lengthy coverage of the new Magento 2 Service Contracts which should help with realizing the platform goals. Quickly summarized: service contracts are fundamentally PHP interfaces which will drastically improve and simplify APIs for modules to communicate with other (Magento) modules AND to expose public API endpoints via XML configuration.
For those looking for the full story, check out Alan’s post on the topic or have a bit of patience for the recording to be available.
Final words
Though at initial thought this webinar felt like a rehearsal of already known information, it quickly revealed important announcements and went a bit into the depth for developers regarding the new service contracts.
Magento 2 is coming and the team behind it seems to be really putting effort into getting things properly organized after all this time. We are enthusiastic about the new “real” Github usage and hope it works out in the long run.
Traditionally, the webinar has been recorded and it will probably available in a day or three from now.
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Further reading: Magento 2 Developer Beta: What You Need to Know →
