euroblaze | OXID e-Commerce User Blog

We are all excited about releasing the OXID VM 2.0 in the next days, the successor to the existing VM.  We’ve added several new features to the VM 2.0, including a management-console for quick access to day to day functions that OXID-programmers use.  At the same time, we’ve moved to VirtualBox, from it’s previous incarnation on VMWare.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be blogging about individual features, so please watch this space for new stuff.  You can also follow us on Twitter with hashtag #OXID_VM.

System

This Virtual Machine is based on:

• Debian GNU/LINUX 6.0.2 (Squeeze)
• Kernel 2.6.32-5-686

Minimum Recommended Hardware

• Single or Dual Core processors of up to 4.x GHz
• 4 GB RAM
• 20 GB Disk (VM performs faster on SSD)

Download

The OXID VM 2.0 is available for download over HTTP.  Filesize 874 MB (courtesy of the cloud service Dropbox).

This version of the OXID Virtual Machine comes with it’s own Management Console.  The source-code for the MC can be viewed on our public SVN.

Virtual Machine Player – VirtualBox

Here’s where you can get the VirtualBox Player for running this virtual-machine in Windows, OS X, Linux and Solaris host-operating-systems.

Discuss

There are surely bugs and features-wishes which we might have overlooked.  We would love to have you participate in the development of this VM.  Please join us at the OXID e-Shop Virtual Machine mailing list and send us tons of feedback!

A few days ago, PayPal introduced a new feature for Android Phones, that enables users to simply hold their smartphones together and wait for a buzz initiating a money transfer between the two users.

The system works currently only with Samsung’s Nexus S phones that contain Near Field Communication chips.  Near Field Communication is a wireless technology that enables devices to exchange information – including encrypted payment data – over a short distance. It can enable a consumer to pay for goods in a store by waving a smartphone with an NFC chip near an NFC-enabled terminal.

To use the new person-to-person payment service, one PayPal user sends a request for a payment to another PayPal user from within a PayPal widget on their smartphone. I’m curious when I can go to the next grocery store and pay with my phone like this!

Today’s internet is glutted with countless websites, blogs, networks, shops, wikis and plenty of other information. The times when people have “surfed the internet” in sense of pursuing a hobby are definitely past history. Nowadays we quickly search the information needed and navigate with speed of light through search engines and popular websites. This makes the creation of a good website a challenge, if you don’t want to lose visitors within the glimpse of an eye. Test yourself: Do you remember, when you lately visited a rather unattractive website? How long did you stay before you pressed the “close tab” button or navigated away from it? According to recent studies, web users decide with just 50 milliseconds, whether to stay on a new website or not.
This is why a good website can’t be good enough in those times. It must appeal all senses of the visitor and make him keen for more.

euroblaze has recently completed the developement of a new OXID module called Export Users Module. This module enables OXID shop owners and shop administrators to export customer data in the common CSV format. Easily chose the required data create the CSV file with just one click.  The following fields are available for export:

• Company_Name
• Street_Address
• Street_Address_2
• Postal_Code
• City
• Salutation
• First_Name
• Last_name
• Telephone_Number
• Email_Address
• National_or_International_Customer

This module is indispensable for the realization of powerful marketing campaigns like newsletters and much more.

Compatibility

The OXID-User-Export module has been developed for OXID eShop 4.4.2.  We will be happy to adapt it to later versions for Agencies and Merchants at cost.

Pricing

Pricing for the OXID-User-Export module is differenciated between Merchant License and Agency License.  Both licenses are based on GPL.  Merchant License, usable on a single shop domain (and on localhost for testing purposes) costs EUR 25.  Agency License, usable on unlimited number of domains, costs EUR 45.

Contact

Merchants and agencies interested in the OXID User-Export-Module may contact Ashant Chalasani at +49-711-7947-2394 or a.chalasani@euroblaze.de

As a company that churns out a few hundred lines of OXID-related code every day, it is important for us to have access to the right development tools at hand. We already profit enormously from the Debian 5.0 Based OXID Virtual Machine.  When combined with the phpDesigner programming IDE, we are left with asking nothing much more!

Here are the top reasons, in order of importance to us, why we standardized on the phpDesigner IDE for all our OXID coding work.

1. Code Explorer feature, which lists all functions, classes, dependency-files, variables and any base classes associated with a PHP code file.
2. Go to Declaration feature, which looks up all the code-files in the tree and jumps directly to where a particular function or class has been defined.  After years of waiting this feature, which is all too familiar to Windows programmers in the Visual Studio IDE, has finally been made available to PHP coders.
3. FTP and SFTP file-browser, which when used in combination with the OXID Virtual Machine, works with no noticable latency
4. Color-coding, not only for PHP, HTML, CSS and Javascript code, but also for SMARTY template files.

Many other functions are listed on the software publisher, MP Software of Denmark’s, website.  The software comes at an affordable license price for individual developers as well as software companies.

We hence recommend the phpDesigner IDE to beginners as well as advanced OXID programmers.

Other IDEs that PHP Developers Love

• PHPStorm
• ZEND
• Eclipse
• and of course… VIM