X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

Hi friends,

Today we’ve released X-Cart 5.3.4. Its main purpose is the integration of an Onboarding Wizard to make it maximum easy for newcomers to set up their store. However, it also comes with several useful features, like AMP skin, automatic currency selection, and more. View details in our blog https://www.x-cart.com/blog/x-cart-5-3-4-amp-onboarding-wizard-progressive-jpeg-bug-fixes.html

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

That's great to hear. There's also an X-Cart 5.3.3.5 forthcoming release listed in the Changelog (but it's not in any non-marketing focused forum posts...) This release has some improvements too, but more importantly, many bug-fixes which are arguably more sought-after initially :wink:

Presumably? The upgrade to X-Cart 5.3.3 5 will be required in advance of upgrading to X-Cart 5.3.4.0 which makes good sense and also gives more time to XC and us paying end-users / XC customers, to double check everything carefully first, before moving up to the next branch.This section is quite ironic :-) We started THIS THREAD 18 months ago, which became a bit exciting later on as different opinions were posted, but the X-Cart response at the time, was POST#10 So it looks like there must have been a re-think / re-design / re-evaluation process since then.

Our own 'cautious' approach, will be to run the X-Cart 5.3.3.5 upgrade process in a dev store and then in a live store (once it's available at Merchant Wave status) and then evaluate X-Cart 5.3.4.0 in detail, in a dev store again, before taking that live. Looking forward to the improvements :D/

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

It's true. We investigated the AMP area and that time decided that it is not applicable for e-commerce.

However, Google pushes this technology, so we investigated it more detailed and decided to implement amp pages as landing pages and then redirect visitors to the dynamic website.

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

XC 5.3.4.0.* has already progressed to XC 5.3.4.1 with a changelog that shows many fixes as well as one improvement. We're guessing these observations came from developer access level users, so at least that appears to be working well. However, the not mentioned in the blog but still shown clearly on the changelog XC 5.3.3.5 release, which we're assuming will be separate and required before progressing to XC 5.3.4.* we still can't see (at merchant level) in any store. This was released on 31st October which is 10 days ago now. 10 days is around the usual time previous upgrades have moved from dev to merchant access level status. We're actively chasing bug-fix releases... Is the XC 5.3.3.5 imminent? :wink:

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

5335 is still in the developer wave, at the moment there are a few stores who upgraded to this version. Still testing.

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

10 days is not enough time at all for any 3rd party dev to adapt and test their modules to the new release. What happens in this case is the new release will not have 3rd party modules ready or if they say they are ready they won't be fully tested...

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

....which maybe the answer as to why XC5 upgrades have not always run smoothly in the past... :D/

However, being parochial for a moment, we (currently) don't use any other modules, apart from XC official modules, which should have been tested / verified / signed off BEFORE this latest upgrade :wink: and... our own custom modules, which obviously can't be tested (in a dev store) until the upgrade is released. Hence us asking...

We no longer get involved in taking developer level upgrades, because merchant level releases should be a better solution for us and our setup

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

5.3.3.4 clean install, upgraded to 5.3.3.5 and 5.3.4.x - they all complain on Environment page about "MySQL cache". The server is on MySQL 5.7.20 and according to MySQL "The query cache is deprecated as of MySQL 5.7.20, and is removed in MySQL 8.0." - https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/query-cache-configuration.html

Why is XC5 listing this as one of the "non-critical requirements" since this is deprecated in the MySQL version used and it's being removed from future MySQL versions? If the cart is checking for it it should check for the MySQL version installed and act accordingly. It is annoying not to mention for a normal non-technical person it will probably trigger "Oh my God what do I do now?" kind of reaction.

And I suspect the code relies on MySQL cache and it has not been adjusted to not use it. This should have been removed from XC5 code by now especially in 5.3.4.x.

I posted about this 2 months ago - https://forum.x-cart.com/showpost.php?p=404968&postcount=11

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

It appears... that maybe, just maybe... :D/ recent forum input from users on the subject of "...get it right first time" might finally be having an effect.

We haven't seen XC 5.3.3.5 at Merchant Level release yet, but XC 5.3.3.6 with additional bug fixes has now been released anyway.

Same situation with XC 5.3.4.0 We haven't seen that at a Merchant Level release yet either, but first XC 5.3.4.1 and now XC 5.3.4.2 have both been released meantime.

We'll still run the X-Cart 5.3.3.5 / XC 5.3.3.6 upgrade process first and examine the results, whilst evaluating X-Cart 5.3.4.* separately (all in dev stores) before taking any of these live.

Looking forward to all the bug fixes first and any improvements second, as soon as these are all released at Merchant Level

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

Not sure when this was included with stock cart. I don't think it was with the newest release.

There is a field in products table


which controls if specification tab shows as a separate tab (true value) or its content shows under description tab (false value). There is no way to control this behavior from admin - at least I did not find it anywhere. This field and its value can be changed with import or directly in database only.

However it has been argued few times already that attributes showing under description - weight, upc, sku - should not be there to begin with. None of these 3 fields is part of the description. If they show at all they should be under Specifications tab. So here we are with completely reversed behavior - instead of moving these fields under Spects tab XC decided to move Spects info under Description tab....

Why? It makes no sense at all...
And why there is no control in admin for this field?

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

By the way, here is the list of the closed ideas. Thank you for you feedback and your help. You are welcome to share your idea here: http://ideas.x-cart.com/forums/229428-x-cart-5-x


7568571-change-shipping-status-on-multiple-orders
7103553-auto-populate-global-attributes
7033934-crm-integrations-with-zoho-or-sugar-crm
6848776-ability-to-define-the-order-of-the-tabs-for-produc
6844161-inline-language-translation-module
6493313-sorting-need-to-sort-class-attribute-values-or-s
6295567-import-export-of-ratings-and-reviews
5906900-allow-zone-definition-based-on-city-names
4965262-wait-while-processing-message
4965201-microdata-information-for-seo
4860478-inventory-tracking-with-serial-numbers
4860433-sms-notifications
4860384-breadcrumb-settings
4860378-usps-web-tools-print-shipping-labels
4860295-exporting-functionality-needs-to-be-based-on-searc
4860268-export-products-to-market-yandex-ru
4860265-surveys-for-checkout-abandonment
391465-backorder-order-with-zero-stock
2756010-cost-pricing
20169046-membership-tied-to-payment-method
18810874-add-rest-hooks-to-the-rest-api
17362117-use-losslessly-compression-on-all-images
16985722-signifyd-integration
16782046-define-wholesale-discounts-as-a-percentage
16520506-expandable-custom-css-box
16401196-disable-product-zoom-on-product-pages
16379167-bitcoin
15147660-bulk-products-editing-product-tabs
13921815-1-click-filter
13011588-make-a-next-and-previous-link-when-looking-at
12955668-support-for-accelerated-mobile-pages-amp
1238279-ability-to-add-product-in-newsletter
12286779-contact-us
11439834-editable-variant-order

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

Can anybody at XC please advise if XC 5.3.4.4 (and future upgrades) will run perfectly / with no faults on PHP 7.2?
Or has it not been tested yet by the Dev Team and if this is the case, where is this now in 'the pipeline'? :wink:
PHP 7.2 was officially released just over 10 days ago ( http://php.net/archive/2017.php#id2017-11-30-1 )
We don't want to use it on any of our domains running X-Cart until we know that it is 100% good to go in advance

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

A nice, quick response via a bug ticket for this has confirmed that XC 5.3.4.4 (so by definition: & all previous releases) will not yet run properly on PHP 7.2.

Useful for anybody possibly about to implement PHP 7.2 on their server. Updates and future advice will be advised by XC

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

I actually had issues with this on PHP 7.1, though that was several versions ago. Currently sticking with 7.0…

Just installed AMP module, wonder how long that will take to make any difference...

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

Some previous XC5 releases did not officially work correctly, when using PHP7.1 (we had a couple of minor ones ourselves, but none that affected the customer's online visits) but XC did fix all those incompatibility errors and all our current setups run perfectly on PHP 7.1 to be fair. We currently don't use any third party supplied XC5 modules though (which you may do) and some of these may not be ready for PHP 7.1 yet possibly, but their providers could / should advise when asked.

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

I switched my cart to php 7.1 last night and returned this morning with no orders and people complaining they couldn't make the site work. Switched it back to 7.0 and no problems now. There are issues with php 7.1, at least in our case.

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

Straight to live? No Dev Store testing first just in case? 8O Guessing it must be to do with your store's specific setup and/or third party modules then. XC Team could surely confirm the answer for you (as they have when we asked about PHP7.2)

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

This could be one of the reason :
https://bt.x-cart.com/view.php?id=48953

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

Which could also explain why we have no issues (XC 5.3.4.4 runs perfectly on PHP 7.1 for us) but we don't use Single Sign-On with OAuth 2

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

We do use Single Sign-On with OAuth 2. I was unable to see any issues on my end but was told by a customer it loaded a weird page with only categories and we had zero orders.

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

I am happy to report that x-cart 5.3.4.4 using PHP version 5.6.32 works perfectly!

Am in absolutely no rush to move to PHP 7 as I don't need that headache :D/

and absolutely don't care if it will shave off a few microseconds from page loads...as Google still does NOT use load times as a ranking factor. :lol:

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

You shouldn't run into any issues using PHP 7.0. If you have control over your server you can run multiple versions of PHP and turn versions on/off very easily.

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

that maybe the case, but until someone tells me that new feature x will not work with php 5.6 then I see no reason to upgrade. The minor speed enhancements seem to only benefit very busy websites...which unfortunately we are not one of them. :)

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

The move to PHP 7 should not be based solely on whether XC is ready for it or not. Or if you think it gives you some advantage or not.

The main reason is PCI compliance.

If you control your server software you should move to PHP 7. Or at least start testing your cart and config to make sure all works ok and then make the move.

To me PHP 5.6.x already reached its EOL at the end of 2017.
You can continue using it until end of 2018 without breaking PCI compliance though.

http://php.net/supported-versions.php

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

Bitpay plugin says "can't generare keys". Is there a rpm requirement for it? I get all green checks on the environment page.

Re: X-Cart 5.3.4: AMP, Onboarding Wizard, Progressive JPEG, Bug Fixes
 

Which they indeed now have done (bug ticket quote):

Quote:

X-Cart will be PHP 7.2 compatible from v5.3.4.5

That's great news we think :D/ Our thanks to the XC Team

Using one of ours dev stores, we'll run and test the 5.3.4.4. > 5.3.4.5 upgrade itself first of all, then upgrade that dev store installation to PHP 7.2 and test everything again. Once that's all verified and we're happy with everything, we'll then upgrade both on our live store and other dev store too.