Magento News Roundup #21

Strictly speaking this should be in the next roundup, but: the Magento 2 Developer Release Candidate has been released! The release will be accompanied by a webinar. Well, any interesting other news?!

Magento

• Fabian Schmengler started a series with practical usage tips for the EcomDev_PHPUnit framework.
• Earlier, Fabian was featured here on magenticians with a post comparing Spryker with Magento.
• On BlueLikeNeon (a web agency) its blog Magento is compared with Shopify.
• In case you want to have grid-based tables in the backend configuration of your module, Andreas von Studnitz explains how to do it.
• Request time of under 300ms for a Magento store without Varnish and FPC. Doesn’t sound realistic? Ivan claims it is. How exactly he managed to achieve that is still a bit vague.
• Fabrizio has released Aoe_CacheRefresh, which can intercept a browser its built-in hard-refresh (ctrl + f5) to force expiration of the Magento cache. Useful during development and theoretically also on live stores because usage of the functionality can be limited to certain IP addresses.
• In a video, Fabrizio walks the viewer through the changes in Aoe_Scheduler v1.0.x.
• Fabrizio has also published an interesting gist in which he publicly discusses the flaws in the CatalogRule module its cronjob.
• Eric Wiese’s portfolio has an interesting backstory about the default Magento responsive theme introduced in Magento EE 1.14 and CE 1.9.
• NWDthemes published a list of funny (or rather sad?) code snippets found in Magento its codebase.
• Triplecheck.io now has image-badges to showcase (or ridicule) the computed quality of a module on Magento Connect.
• This answer by Anna on Magento SE provides an useful checklist for the security of a Magento store. Seems like a good fit for MageUpgradeChecklist or MageSecurityChecklist (which does not exist yet).
• In case your PHPStorm upgrade cycle heavily relies on whether Magicento is supported, it might be comforting to know that Magicento works with PHPStorm 9.

Magento 2

• Already spoiled in the introduction: the Magento 2 Developer Release Candidate has been released. The changelog has an overview of what changed relatively to the previous version and a new document in the Magento 2 devdocs already has the technical release notes for Magento 2.0 ready.
• Regarding the Magento 2 devdocs: topics which can be picked for fresh contributions now have a “up for grabs” label.
• Up next in the Magento 2 release cycle (reminder to update that post) is the merchant beta.
• Tomorrow (Tue, Mar 24 2015, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM GMT) there will be a webinar for the Magento 2 Developer Release Candidate.
• After a comment by Mark regarding Zend 3 coming out soon and Magento 2 still relying on Zend 1, Anton Kril reveals that there is an ongoing effort to gradually remove Zend 1.

Community

• After two weeks of the first MageUnconference, a lot of reports have been published. Bottom line: you should be disappointed if you missed it.
  • Anna goes through the event in FAQ-style.
  • Carmen published a short review which turns out to be actually pretty long.
  • Another review comes from Andreas,
  • Gordon has an overview of the sessions he attended.
  • There is an official photo gallery.
• The official Magento forum (press release) is back. The old forum has been completely removed and this new instance (running on Lithium) is starting from scratch. Other than observing people are having a lot of fun, it’s probably a bit early to judge its value.
• New video material includes three new (26, 27, and 28) epsiodes of MageTalk and interviews with Allan MacGregor and Miguel Balparda on MageEngage.
• Kalen, host of MageTalk, got interviewed by CloudWays.
• Magento CERL is looking for volunteering merchants to participate in non-compulsory “one or two 30-90 minute sessions per month” with the goal of improving Magento.

German speakers, don’t forget to check out Matthias Zeis’ Magento Neuigkeiten which we are basing our Magento News Roundups on. In case we forgot to mention you, made a mistake or missed an awesome Magento project, let us know on Twitter, in the comments below or send us an email. Thanks for reading. Header image background by Stefano Corso (Pensiero)