osCommerce 2.4 – intense work ongoing for 30 days

Here’s a sneak peek of 2.4 in action

As you can see, it looks very much like the 2.3 series, but under the hood it is a different beast. 960 grid has been removed in favour of Bootstrap and Stylesheets are LESS. Codewise, the system will be “App” controlled and pages will have Controllers & Content files, take for example the product_info page;

Here you can plainly see the “CONTROLLER” file and “CONTENT” files. By using Apps in this way it will be much easier to create new modules that can “hook” into existing modules. So, let’s imagine you want a coupon discount system…you upload the new “coupon” files via FTP and click a button to turn it on. Done.

The Impact of 2.4

osCommerce 2.4 is a halfway house between the “old school” coding of the 2.2/2.3 series that has been developed over the past decade, and the new style coding that osCom3 brings. 2.4 will bring with it some structured rules for developers which should make the whole system that much more professional.

Confused?

Don’t be. In general my advice is this;

Shop Owners:
if you are at 2.3, stay there
if you are an early adopter go 2.4

Developers:
if you are a developer who relies on clients to put bread on your table work with 2.3 as I believe most existing shops will stay with 2.3 and a good majority of new shops will go 2.3 (due to the lack of available addons).