OpenCart 1.5.5 - What to expect?

Written by in News on October 7, 2012  |  14 Comments

opencart-1-5-5-what-to-expect

Last time we announced the new version of Opencart (1.5.4) and before that about the project transfer to github. And now, there is no exciting news other than a teaser of next OpenCart release.

For the upcoming OpenCart 1.5.5, from what Daniel says and result of our research, the following features to be added:

  • Product filters
  • Auto updater
  • Better install/ upgrade
  • Extension manager

Let’s look at these one by one.

Product filters

As expected these would let the visitors filter your products by a certain criteria like category, manufacture, price, color, size etc. Indeed this is a useful feature to help visitors to narrow down the product into the list of criteria they need.

Auto Updater

This sounds big. Can we really have an auto update the way WordPress does? If true this will be amazing and bad at the same time. Amazing, because, well everybody wants a bugs fix or new features just a click a way. But judging by the way OpenCart changes from one release to another this can possibly introduce automatic incompatibility bugs with the dozens of installed extensions a real-life store has. We can just wait and see, but I don’t think we are going to be disappointed.

Better install/upgrade script

At the time of writing most of the above mentioned features are barely working, but you can see the install and upgrade got more aware of your surroundings. The upgrade script has loads of code added to make sure the transition from earlier OpenCart versions back to 1.5.1 happens smoothly. At the moment the only new addition in the install script is that it lets you choose a database driver on one of the last steps of the process.

Extension Manager

As with the above features this is still under heavy development, but what we got from the code was that you can upload your own extension archive. The extension manager then extracts it to a temporary directory, moves it in the actual tree of OpenCart.

Even if we not see any information in the code, but according to it name, extensions manager hopefully make us easier to enable/ disable extension after installed or to remove files of uninstalled extensions. Personally, we couldn’t get it working from most recent code snapshot. But this, alongside the auto updater looks quite ambitious. Kudos to the development team!

Is This -Really- a Good News?

Some of you might be so excited expecting the next OpenCart release, but another might be realised that this could be not a good news for current version. Indeed all listed above is great feature but do we really need it at 1.5.x version?

Right now if we talk about the most OpenCart stable version, then the answer would be 1.4.9.x. And the 1.5.x is an exploring and adding new features. But most developer will suggest us to use the latest version with endless features development with a regular bugs fix contain another bugs. We happy and excited expecting the new features, but we will more pleased to have stable eCommerce site.

It’s not to late for the OpenCart team to separating the current work into separated 1.6-alpha branch and continue to release bugs fix regularly for the 1.5.x version. The worst think is some people releasing their own bugs fix version for 1.5.4 based on OpenCart development at Github. This is indeed a good contribution, but of course all of us will agree it’s better if the bugs fix is released by the Dev Team.

— —

Well, whether this is a good or bad news, based on our observations of the past releases of Opencart (2 months for each release, average for the past 3-4 times) and reflecting the major development of OpenCart 1.5 from 1.4; we at OpencartNews expect this one to come somewhere in the end of November or may be as Christmas gifts.

Follow @OpencartNews on twitter to stay tuned as we update this article with the latest news around the oncoming OpenCart release.

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14 Comments on "OpenCart 1.5.5 - What to expect?"

  1. Namoro April 9, 2013 at 10:10 am · Reply

    So the new edition is out already…does it change the default layout of the pages?

  2. Gold Carp April 9, 2013 at 10:07 am · Reply

    I think I will stay at 1.5.4 since I have so many cutome extensions, also most of the extension on opencart.com are available for 1.5.4. Nobody likes bugs all the time, and new versions will bring if u dont have a fresh cart..

    I am only interested in product filter..is it possible to just update that one?

    • Rasmus March 8, 2014 at 8:51 am ·

      Hi, I am trying to figrue out how to get this to work on the background element.I would like the body{background-image: url(blablah.jpg);} to have a background image that behaves the same way this does in a div.Can anyone help me with this? I tried: $( body’).anystretch( img01.jpg ); but it does not work right. The image has a padding applied and if there is not enough content to fill the screen the image disappears.

  3. kikka January 3, 2013 at 3:25 pm · Reply

    when it comes out the version 1.5.5?

  4. Mohamad Fahmi December 19, 2012 at 11:27 am · Reply

    Nice Article,, good news.. love filters module :)
    IMO: if you have ablity playin with MVC,, opencart is framework for your ecommerce site :)

  5. Sayr December 13, 2012 at 9:10 am · Reply

    At the moment I am searching for a tool, to upgrade to the new version. I had already decided on a migration tool- Cart2Cart , I hope it worth attention as it can prevent from any serious mistakes like data loss. But still not sure about about the platform. And version 1.5 or 1.4. I am currently on 1.3
    Has anybody tried cart2cart? I haven’t tried how well it works and what modules are supported/not supported, but it would be worth checking out as an alternative to hiring someone to custom code you a migration.

    • Qahar December 15, 2012 at 9:32 pm ·

      I’m sure there is no extensions that support OpenCart from 1.3 to 1.5. If we talk about code changes, v1.3 is too far behind from current version. I suggest you to rebuild your site based on OpenCart latest version, and migrate the important data like product, url alias, categories structure etc to new sites.

  6. David December 2, 2012 at 2:30 am · Reply

    I think the product filters will be a great addition as well as the extension manager. However, the auto update is just a LITTLE scary! : / I think an auto ALERT would be a good thing, but not to automatically update…there are hundreds of extension developers who are not on top of the game with their plugins so AutoUpdate could DESTROY a ton of websites!!

    Does the guy in charge of the development even use his suggestions from people? Cause I’ve been coming across the same problems in forums since version 1.3. Things like the ability to add your own custom product fields. This to me seems like a HUGE deal! And it’s apparently so simple to add when you know the structure of OC. Yet you have guys selling their extensions for $20+ dollars, yet never releasing a product that actually works appropriately and that keeps updated with the latest version of OC.

    • Qahar December 15, 2012 at 9:44 pm ·

      From what I know, Auto Update is not available on next version yet. It’s look like OpenCart decide to delay this feature for some reason. But we can’t sure yet until the next version is released.

      Regardless of that, there is a change in Category system and most possibly we will see Product Filter on next version.

  7. Faruk November 21, 2012 at 2:51 pm · Reply

    We wait for new features. Opencart is really good e-commerce script. I always use it. But should has new good features. We always need to buy extensions…

  8. faaliyet November 3, 2012 at 2:03 pm · Reply

    Expectations vs Reality
    https://github.com/opencart/opencart
    There was No action in previous 10 days. Pull requests and Issues are counting…
    It seems like we going to see differences between expectations and reality.
    So now, what to expect ?

  9. faaliyet October 14, 2012 at 12:30 pm · Reply

    Product filters:
    ==============
    “Product filters” will be a useful feature (also from the user’s perspective).
    I didn’t check at Github to understand how that works, but it should be there as included option to make it stable (as continuous development).

    btw, Magento has integrated that feature long time ago.

    it’s done by a contributor in osCommerce with Extra Product Fields “http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,6856″. As I am developer, that addon gives very possibilities to the osCommerce store owner/users as search and content accessibility. its hierarchy very powerful and based on feature-driven development.
    I think, Daniel should check that to make required changes for OpenCart’s “Product filters”.

    Auto Updater, Better install/upgrade script, Extension Manager:
    =======================================================
    What means to me?
    new bugs, additional complicated codes for the developers, heavy development progresses etc…
    I agree that, good news for the store owners, who use the “default (untouched)” OpenCart.
    But, as I said above… New versions < New Bugs

    Author:
    " …. but of course all of us will agree it’s better if the bugs fix is released by the Dev Team."

    I completely don't agree !
    Very Big Open Source Software Companies (like PHP) moved their projects to the GitHub!
    … Just to make software development process faster and faster, stable …
    And we should keep in our mind that commits are pushing by other experienced software developers.

    OpenCart is powerful, but the Team (as I know there is NO team, 1 person cannot be a team, right ?) almost has no effort ! Anyway, I don't wanna talk about its creator.
    OpenCart deserves much better ! right ?

    • Qahar October 15, 2012 at 10:58 am ·

      That why OpenCart need to put this new feature into v.1.6-alpha branch. So it will be easier for the community to contribute bugs fix for the v.1.5.x and help to develope/ improve the new feature in separate branch.

      I’m agree that people contribute for the bugs fix, but still, official bugs fix should be released by the project owner. We cannot take any risk to use unmaintained bugs fix version.

    • Gangsar October 16, 2012 at 1:33 am ·

      Isn’t it already moved to github, right ?
      I’m agree that public could contribute in opencart development but the branch release is still should be released only by the official team (i.e. Daniel). That’s why commit feature is there to overcome it (Great github).
      “OpenCart for all people …. Yeah”

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