This new VirtueMart 3 Version is completing the vm3.0 series. There won't be any new vm3.0.x updates other than if we have a security issue. Some of our developers are still developing on Joomla 2.5 to ensure the backward compatibility. But from now on, any new version will be developed on the most recent Joomla or WordPress releases. We won't break the compatibility by purpose, but we just cannot test any longer for older versions.
We have got VirtueMart running on WordPress already in our laboratory. WordPress opens a new market for shops which do not need a complex CMS setup. The last big task is at the moment only the router, which must be adjusted to the WordPress links. The ACL is at the moment only roughly translated, but it will be possible to make it more fine grained later, so that we can simulate 80% of the Joomla rights within Wordpress. Transforming VirtueMart to a cms-less system forces us to use an own user table. So in future we will have real Virtuemart users, not being based on the old Joomla table. The basic trick is that we still use a light version of the Joomla libraries, so extension developers can easily write extensions compatible to Joomla and WordPress. We hope that we can extend this technique to integrate VM into more CMS systems like Drupal. We plan to publish a beta before Christmas.
Since it is the last of its series, we added some of the membership features to the main version. So product variants work now also in the category browse view. Changing the ordering within a dropdown of a multivariant was quite painful. But we added a drag and drop for the children list, so it is very easy to adjust.
Here an incomplete list of the new features
New Features for shopowners
- Customfields of type S (String) and P (Property) can be used to automatically create a dropdown for search (like tags)
- Added ajax for child variants in category browse view - MV (MultiVariant) and GC (GenericVariant)
- Category view now has the same options for displaying additional VM content as were available in the virtuemart view (which is now deprecated)
- Update of com_tcpdf to tcpdf version 6.2.12
- Added drag and drop sorting of MultiVariants in product edit
- Already loaded grouped products are not displayed twice on the same browse view
- Product is now virtually added to the cart before the conditions are tested. So it works now also for weights and other conditions (not just price)
- User dependent currency for invoice, mail, and order view
- Currency can now use the "space character" in the display format
- Payment and shipment methods can now be edited in different currencies
- Changed addProductToRecent so that it always stores 10 product ids; can be adjust by hidden config max_recent_products
- Added a template vmbeez3 derived from beez3
- New VirtueMart/Joomla! 3 full installer
- Paypal accepts multiple currencies
- Amazon works now with the cart ajax and updated library
- Avatax taxfreightcode added
New Features for developer and templater
- shopfunctions::getLoginForm works now with a sublayout login, so it can be used in other views
- Added trigger plgVmOnCheckoutCheckStock
- Removed id tag from dropdowns to ensure that chosen can always generate a unique id
- Quite a lot of JS enhancements, more robust and faster
- Added function sendCurrForm, which simply fires the form if an input has the right class.
- Plugins can now define in the constructor which values should be handled as convertables
Important for shops with overrides
The new js for using ajax for reloading product content uses now always the same class. The class is "product-container". Just search for the div with "productdetails-view productdetails" and add "product-container". In case you want the ajax reload within a product modul, you need to adjust the overrides here also. Furthermore the layout login of the user view is now in the sublayout folder. Members who used the ajax for child variants within the browse view should change the layout back to default.
For a full list of all changes or more information how to adjust your overrides, please read here in our forum http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=135402.0