It was my pleasure to demo Commerce Kickstart 2.x at DrupalCon Munich as I presented Next Steps for Drupal Commerce. The relaunched distribution has been a long time coming, and I couldn't be happier with the release our Kickstart team at Commerce Guys has produced. They've proven the idea that we could keep the core of Drupal Commerce a slim eCommerce framework and wrap it in a usability layer that makes it both attractive and easier to administer.

Beyond the sheer amount of polish that has gone into the UI from the installer to the "Shiny" administration theme, its two most exciting features for me are the Inline Entity Form and Views Megarow functionality.

An inline entity form on a product display node with multiple variations.

Inline Entity Form allows us to embed product details forms inside node forms, simplifying the product vs. product display architecture that has made Drupal Commerce notorious (and truly flexible). I could write a whole post about just how we've implemented it, but I'll save the gory details for a later time.

I will at least point out that if this were a single value product reference field, instead of the drag-and-drop table pictured here, the module would simply embed the product related form elements directly into the node form.

A Views Megarow in action after clicking the "Quick Edit" link.

An equally impressive technical implementation, Views Megarow makes it simple to edit groups of products and orders inline in a View through some fancy AJAX row expansion. It gives you easy access to bulk product edit forms and order summaries complete with order activity streams and administrator comments.

Both of these features have been meticulously planned, designed, user tested, and revised to provide a very streamlined user experience for store administrators. With my time mostly focused on other development, I happily applaud our team for putting out such high quality work.

However, even with this release under our belts, we're hardly ready to sit back and relax. We have plenty more to do in the development of Drupal Commerce distributions, contributed modules, and the core framework itself. I spent the final part of my session at DrupalCon proposing the topics and timeline under consideration for a Drupal Commerce 2.x roadmap targeting Drupal 8.

To make sure we're meeting these challenges head on, I proposed a Commerce 2.x planning and development sprint at our offices in Paris in mid-October. The primary goal of the sprint is to research and plan development on Drupal 8, including how to best utilize and work with the various core initiatives, what new modules to add as dependencies or bring into core as new features, and what core code needs refactoring.

This sprint is on the calendar for October 15-19, and while we likely won't be laying down a lot of code, we're still looking for collaborators. We're particularly interested in folks with experience developing for Drupal Commerce on Drupal 7, bonus points awarded to those who have had to work around its limitations.

I'll post more on the topic in the near future, including specific items we intend to address in 2.x development. In the meantime, it's about time for a Commerce 1.4.

Topics: DrupalconDrupal CommerceDrupal