Roadmap/4.2.0

Release date

 * October 27th, 2009

New features

 * APS (Application Packaging Standard), which is a format designed to help implement Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business models for all industry cloud service providers. You will also be able to install OXID eShop on a hosted environment of a provider offering APS.
 * Multidimensional Variants: This new functionality enables OXID eShop to manage a variant of a shop article that can have variants. For example, a red T-Shirt can have different sizes.
 * As you might have heard, the product Zend Platform was switched to a new product called Zend Server. As we have an interface for the integration of Zend Platform with OXID eShop Enterprise Edition, we want to update this interface and enable the Zend Server integration.
 * Built in non-native libraries in OXID eShop will be updated, at least JPGraph and YUI. As we wrote to dev-general, the YUI library can be made much more lightweight by cutting parts not used in the shop.
 * A Template Override System for an easier design customization maintenance was implemented. A new option sCustomTheme was added to config.inc.php for this reason that you have to fill with the value of your choice, e.g. 'custom' . Now, make a new directory with the same name (custom ) and structure as you know it from basic and copy all of your adapted tpl-files to this location. The shop will now look up if there is an adapted file in your custom folder; if not it will return to the basic folder. This works for included files as well, for directory based resources (CSS and JavaScript files) just copy the complete tree to the custom theme folder.
 * Also, the language management from administration panel was made less difficult. Before, only four languages where provided in OXID eShop from the admin area. If you wanted to have a fifth language, you had to define new database fields. From version 4.2.0 on, the shop will automatically take over this job when you create a new language. Deleting that language will not delete the created database fields but will set them back to the default value instead.
 * Nice and helpful popups with additional information where built in closed to input fields in admin area. Check it out clicking on the "? " buttons you will find there.
 * In close cooperation with our SEO specialist and due to new SEO expertise, some changes in this concept where made: The rel="nofollow" attributes were removed from most of the links. Furthermore, article links will be built for each category an article is assigned to. A canonical link in the details page will lead to the article's main category.
 * While fixing a bug (#0001368), a log folder was introduced.