Magento, a division of eBay company X.commerce and a provider of open-source e-commerce software, released HTML5 enhancements to its Enterprise 1.12 and Community Edition 1.7 e-commerce platforms, said Roy Rubin, GM of Magento and chief product and customer officer at X.commerce.
The Community Edition, released in 2008, allows businesses to manage the front-end web shopping experience as well as backend functions including catalogs, inventory, orders, promotions, and merchandising, Rubin said. Enterprise customers download the product and oversee it on their own.
The Enterprise platform, released one year after the open source Community Edition, builds on these core features and was designed to have more robust capabilities and features focusing on revenue generation, operational streamlining and scalability. Additionally, Rubin said, the product is supported by Magento’s service-level agreements (SLAs).
Both products will now feature HTML5 capabilities out-of-the-box, enabling “mobile web capabilities integrated deep into the platform,” Rubin said. “It’s not an add-on; it’s a truly intrinsic experience.”
Merchants using either the Community or Enterprise platform with the HTML5 enhancements can add significant functionality to their mobile websites including gesture-based controls, image scaling, drag-and-drop shopping carts, and use of each device’s native audio and video capabilities. “Before, [incorporation of these features] was more cumbersome,” Rubin said. “[Merchants] would have to develop HTML5 capabilities on their own. It wasn’t a packaged offering.”
Magento was purchased by eBay in June 2011. Magento’s mobile enhancements to its e-commerce platform follow the Oct. 2011 addition of social commerce tools.
