In keeping with its proven history of coming up with effective enhancement time and again, Magento has released new version with number of fixes and improvements.
Magento, the proven high end open-source eCommerce solution offering unprecedented flexibility and control, the new release covers over 350 issue resolutions with new functionalities.
Google Website Optimizer Integration in Magento 1.1.7 is a major enhancement to the application. Website Optimizer is an easy-to-use tool for testing site content that delivers actionable results.
Here is the list of major highlights
• Google Website Optimizer integration
• Google Base integration
• Scheduled DB logs cleaning option
Offshore software Development India offers all the extensions for the new versions. All the Magento extensions developed at Offshore software Development India are compatible with the new version of the Magento.
Please find following services for the new version of the Magento by Offshore software Development India.
Magento Payment Gateway Solutions
1. iVeri
2. paymentec
3. safepay
Magento Custom Extensions
1. Magento Advance Search Extension.
2. Magento Non Product Search Extension.
3. Shopping Cart Extension.
4. Custom Shipping Charges Extension.
5. Custom Shipping Date Extension.
6. Image Rotation Extension.
7. Click and Popup Product Extension
8. Hide price Extension.
9. Custom Sitemap Extension.
10. Feature/ Clearance / Sales / New Arrivals Extension.
Magento Data/Site Migration Solutions
1. Migrate OSCommerce site to Magento.
2. Migrate any ecommerce site to Magento.
3. Migrating Data to Magento Site
Magento Theme Design Solutions
1. Magento custom design templates and themes.
2. Magento themes from PSD/JPEG/Any Site.
3. Migrating Data to Magento Site.
For more information please refer http://www.offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com/php-mysql-pgsql-programming/magento-customization-solutions.html
But mobile browsing experiences can be frustrating for customers, and developing ecommerce websites that are functional, legible, and compelling for mobile device users has been the realm of moneyed and massive e-retailers like Amazon.com. The Apple iPhone actually does an excellent job of rendering websites already, but there are still problems. Most online stores are designed to look good on a modern, flat-panel monitor which may be 19 inches in diagonal. While these sites are rendered properly on the iPhone, they take on diminutive dimensions, requiring an iPhone owner to zoom in, zoom out, and scroll in all directions. Bandwidth can also be a problem. iPhones use WiFi connections (802.11n standard), Bluetooth (radio), fast 3G cellular networks, or older and slower cellular networks depending on what sort of connection is available at a given time. Browsing on WiFi or a speedy 3G network might be no problem, but uploading an online store over older cellular networks can be painfully slow. To address this, Magento developed a special theme or combination of layout, template, and presentation files that are optimized for an iPhone's browser. This theme still offers great looking graphics, full functionality, and the same payment gateways, but in proportions and layouts that make a store attractive and easy to use on an iPhone's palm-sized LCD screen. Equalizing m-Commerce Magento's new iPhone theme is an important (if small) step, giving independent e-retailers an easy way to tap m-commerce's amazing potential. Varien, a Los Angeles, Calif.-based ecommerce developer and consultancy, created Magento Commerce and then unleashed the platform, turning it over to a vibrant community of perhaps 400,000 users (store owners and developers), while staying intimately involved in the platform's development and expansion. The new theme makes it easier for iPhone users to browse and shop Magento-powered sites with ease. Basically, Magento utilizes "the iPhone's inherent navigation methods and offer[s] quick catalog browsing, global site search, customer accounts, and a shopping cart with a complete checkout process," Varien said, "The iPhone extension delivers a user experience that supports the iPhone's touch-screen functionality, taking users on a clearly defined path from browsing to purchasing." The iPhone is just a Drop in the Bucket Unfortunately, as awesome, cool, and fantastic as the iPhone may or may not be, it represents a very tiny percentage of the total mobile handset universe. By some estimates, leading mobile phone makers Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, LG, Sony-Ericsson, BlackBerry, and the like, build between 700 million and 1 billion new mobile handsets each year. While something like 8 million to 10 million iPhones have sold worldwide based on Steve Jobs 2008 MacWorld keynote speech and estimates for the iPhone 3G. So the new Magento iPhone theme only scratches the m-commerce surface. On the other hand, what e-retailer wouldn't want to reach as many as 10 million or so potential customers all of whom represent the iPhone's decidedly upscale user base. Using the iPhone Theme to gain a Competitive Advantage. m-Commerce is here to stay, and retailers who implement a mobile solution like Magento's iPhone extension will gain a competitive advantage over other ecommerce sites that are slower to adopt a mobile-specific platform. And there is still hope that Varien or other ecommerce developers will address the mobile mass market soon. “We are looking to expand the capabilities of Magento to target additional mobile browsers in the future, but the iPhone, with its smart usability, market share and passionate audience was a natural place to start,” said Chris Marshall, a Varien spokesman. source:- practicalecommerce.com/
Customer Main Features:
Search Engine Friendly URLs
Create search-engine friendly URLs (like http://example.com/product/brand-best-shoe/1234) that make it easier for search engine crawlers to index your site, which ultimately drive more organic search visitors.
Meta-Tags
With each new catalog page (product, category, even a static or dynamic page) you'll be able to define meta tags: page title, description, and keywords.
E-mail Notifications
Magento will makes it easy to get notifications to customers. Customize email templates for a variety of notifications in both HTML and plain text. Examples of e-mails include new customer notifications, order confirmation, order update, lost password, etc.
Customers will have the ability to:
- Find products to compare by clicking "Compare" on the products to add them to the Compare Box as they browse.
- From the Compare Box, a "Compare These" button brings up the product comparison chart.
- View, print and email a comparison chart, showing all of the selected products' comparable attributes and how they stack up against one another.
Layered Navigation allows your customers to filter products in a category using different product attributes. Customers can filter down a large number of items to fit their price range, size, etc., allowing them to find the right products quickly and easily.
On each product page, you'll find:
- Add-a-Tag: Allow logged-in users to add a tag to the product's description.
- Tag Cloud: The tag cloud will display all tags associated to the product. Clicking on a tag will bring up a product listing page with all other products that share the same tag.
The Shopping Cart will be composed of the following:
The products list, which will list the products currently in the cart along with the following information about each:
- Product Thumbnail
- Product Name
- Unit Price
- Quantity (editable)
- Total (per product)
- Remove Button
- Update Button
The totals section, which will show the following applicable totals without having to go through checkout:
- Subtotal
- Tax (if applicable)
- Discounts (if applicable)
- Grand Total (what the customer owes)
- Estimated Shipping, where a customer can enter a zip code and get a shipping quote
- The discount field, where a customer can enter a coupon code
Administration Panel Main Features:
Sales Report
A detailed overview of number of orders, items sold, revenue, shipping charged, discounts applied, taxes collected, etc.
Shopping Cart Report
This shows a per product breakdown of how often products have been added to cart, conversion rate, etc. An additional view shows a breakdown of customers and number of items in their saved shopping carts.
Wishlist Report
A per product breakdown of popularity in wishlist, number of times purchased from wishlist, percentage of wish lists purchases vs. regular purchases, etc.
Reviews Report
The reviews report will show the most active customer reviewers, most frequently reviewed products. Store owners can also view all reviews written by individual customers, or all reviews applied to individual products.
Tags Report
The tags report will show the most active taggers, and most frequently tagged products. Store owners can also view all tags added by individual customers, or all tags added to individual products. The report will also show most popular tags, regardless of product.
Search Report
Will show most popular search terms, or search terms with the highest number of results.
With Magento's Content Management System (CMS), you'll be able to create an unlimited number of static pages and landing pages using HTML. When you're creating a page, you can define the following: - Page Title: Define the title of the page.
- Meta Data: Define meta data like meta description, meta keywords etc.
- URL: Define the page URL (http://www.mystore.com/faq)
Batch Import/Export
With Batch Import/Export, you can easily manage your catalog without having to edit within the admin. Instead, export your data (you can customize exactly what data you export), edit it (add or modify items), and then import it back to see the changes in the catalog.
Not everyone in your company should have access to every facet of your store. That's why Magento features an easy-to-use Permissions Editor. Create users for all your employees then assign them to groups, eg. "Full Admin", "Customer Service", "Warehouse".
source:- webscripts.softpedia.com/
Version 5.3 features improved support for Windows, said Andi Gutmans, who is participating in development of the release and is CTO at PHP tools vendor Zend Technologies. Gutmans spoke about the release during an interview at the company's ZendCon 2008 conference in Santa Clara, California on Wednesday afternoon.
"The community has worked on creating a much better binary package for PHP on Windows, which includes the latest [Microsoft] compilers," to benefit performance, Gutmans said. Additionally, more recent third-party libraries are featured for running PHP applications on Windows, with support for XML, graphic manipulation, and database access.
Namespaces, a capability enabling mixing and matching of PHP code from various sources, is highlighted in 5.3. This feature enables better maintenance and reuse, Gutmans said. "It allows you to modularize your applications for better maintenance and it makes it easier to use various frameworks together," he said. Frameworks like Zend's PHP framework and PEAR (PHP Extension and Application Repository) could be leveraged, said Gutmans.
A full implementation of garbage collection, which provides more efficient use of memory, is featured in PHP 5.3 as well. With garbage collection, long-running PHP scripts will make more efficient use of memory by avoiding conditions that could lead to memory leaks, Gutmans said.
Another feature, PHP archive (phar) files, enables bundling of a PHP application into a single archive. This makes it easier to distribute and deploy a PHP application, Gutmans said. The concept is similar to the JAR (Java Archive) files used in the Java world.
Version 5.3 also offers significant performance enhancements as well a client library integrating PHP with the MySQL database. In general terms, PHP 5.2 applications should function on the PHP 5.3 runtime, according to Gutmans.
Internationalization support has been enhanced, for building of applications that can be multilingual. Specifically, the ICU (International Components for Unicode) library is being exposed. Developers can perform functions like sorting and transformations.
Although Gutmans previously estimated a late-2008 release for PHP 5.3, the release now is expected to reach the release candidate phase in the first quarter of 2009. General availability will follow.
Also at ZendCon on Wednesday, Zend offered insights on what it views as the next-generation of PHP applications. These will be easily maintained, extensible, powerful, and lucrative, said Wil Sinclair, manager of the advanced technology group at Zend.
The first generation of PHP applications was very simple and lacked testing, he said. They had layers for presentation, application control, database access, and business logic. The next generation of applications has had perhaps millions of users, is object-oriented, and is typically modular, Sinclair said.
Next-generation systems have been built on the Model View Controller framework and are unit-tested. "Now, we've got an assurance of quality, not necessarily a guarantee," Sinclair said.
PHP has entered the commercial world, he said. Sinclair presented as an example Magento, an open-source e-commerce platform built on PHP 5 on top of Zend Framework. Built by Varien, Magento has had more than 450,000 downloads and more than 170 Magento Connect extensions. The application has processed millions of dollars in transactions, according to Sinclair.
The first public beta of Magento appeared in August 2007, and the 1.0 launch was on March 31, he said.
"We definitely see Magento as a next-generation PHP application, said Roy Rubin, founder and CEO of Varien.
Meanwhile, open-source WSO2 leveraged ZendCon to make a play in the PHP realm. The company launched WSO2 Web Services Framework for PHP (WSF/PHP) 2.0 this week, featuring a scripting language library enabling developers to build and consume SOAP and REST Web services. Security and reliability are offered for enterprise SOA, the company said. The technology was demonstrated at ZendCon.
Data services, interoperability, and security are extended in the release. Developers also gain a framework for deploying PHP services meeting enterprise SOA standards, according to WSO2. Additionally, developers can bridge to tens of thousands of PHP Web applications and enterprise data sources, applications, and services.
Capabilities are added in four key areas with version 2.0:
-- Replay detection to track whether a message is fresh or has been sent previously, thus preventing replay attacks that could lead to denial of service
-- WS-Trust backing to issue, renew, and validate security tokens for trusted relationships
-- WS-SecureConversation support to allow a series of messages to be protected by a single session key and improve efficiency of the operation
-- Public Key cryptography standards enablement for handling multiple client x509 certificates simultaneously
Developers can send and receive binary data as attachments using MTOM or a SOAP message with attachments. MTOM in version 2.0 has been optimized via caching. WSDL support has been expanded via tools. WSF/PHP 2.0 is available for download now.
source:- techworld.com.au/