Magento 2 is still in the development. We have gone through the code and found there are lots of changes made in this version. Core of the Magento has been modified a lot. In our post we will give you the quick overview about some of the core improvement areas.
From a back-end point of view, Magento 2’s core technology stack has been brought up to date with what we expect for modern web development
1. Different Directory Structure:
Magento 2 directory structures are little bit different than Previously Magento versions. The major change in the directory structure started from the root directory. They have removed the skin folder from the root directory. Previously there were nine directories on the root however in the Magento 2 only five directories are on the root level. They have created a directory name “pub” and moved Js, Skin, Error folder from root to pub.
2. Factory method accepts the name of a PHP class as a string instead of class alias strings:
The first important difference in Magento2 is that factory method has been removed .The way you call models, helpers, blocks is fully different in Magento2 .Instead of factory names you need to use the full class name now. For example:
3. Removed Your_Module.xml file from app/etc/modules/
Previously we were using module.xml file @ app/etc/modules/ to activate our module but in magento2 it has been changed. Now we will use config.xml file to activate our module means adding active and codePool tags into your config.xml. Like:
4. Visual Design Editor in Magento Admin Panel
The Visual Design Editor is an easy to use, “drag and drop” interface for editing Magento Page Layout. Implementation of the Visual Design Editor means that modifying the arrangement/configuration of Containers and Blocks no longer requires specialized technical knowledge; many of these changes can be made easily in the Admin Panel by any site administrator.
The Visual Design Editor represents website pages and page types as collections of block elements: Blocks and Containers.
Block
A block is a block-level HTML element on a page, which can be manipulated by the visual design editor. Regardless of whether the element has content or not, the design editor visually distinguishes it from other elements and provides necessary controls for manipulating it. In future: A block cannot contain other blocks.
Container
A container, like a block, is a block-level HTML element which is visually distinguished and can be manipulated by the design editor. Containers don’t have own content, but consist of other blocks or containers. Containers represent area for “dropping”. Container stores information about sort order for elements within.
We’ve managed to get Magento 2 up and running ourselves for exploring. We will share more insights in the Part 2 of this blog with our findings.
Stay tuned for our thoughts in Part 2!
