WooCommerce Community News: June 2021

Howdy, Woo Developer Community! 👋 Here are some updates of recent happenings that you may have missed over the past month. Some items are detailed in previous posts on this blog, and other items are pulled from sources like GitHub. We’ve packaged everything into a digest to help keep everyone in the loop.

Developer Resources

• As we mentioned last month, we’ve been incrementally publishing a dedicated developer guide on testing and quality. If you haven’t already, be sure to take a look at the guide and let us know how we can improve it for you.
• ICYMI: there was a recent developer advisory about work that was done to refactor the Settings page in WooCommerce Core. These changes will be landing in WooCommerce 5.5, so be sure to test out your extensions to make sure they’ll continue to function as expected. You can use the WooCommerce Beta Tester Plugin to test out new versions of WooCommerce before they’re officially released.
• There was a new major version of the @woocommerce/components package released June 10th, 2021. Version 7.0.0 includes many improvements, such as tree-shaking support, as well as component deprecations that you may want to be aware of if you use this package. Take a look at the changelog for more details.
• Version 0.2.0 of the @woocommerce/api package was recently released and includes support for working with Orders. You can read about other functionality that has been added in the changelog.
• There have been many recent improvements to the @woocommerce/e2e-environment, @woocommerce/e2e-utils, and @woocommerce/e2e-core-tests packages, including utilities for integrating screenshots and Slackbots into testing workflows, helpers to streamline housekeeping around tests, and additional test flows for different checkout scenarios.

WooCommerce Core

• WooCommerce 5.4 was released June 8, 2021. Notable changes include improved compatibility with jQuery 3, REST API enhancements for more accurate localization support, and updated versions of WooCommerce Admin and WooCommerce Blocks. You can read more details about everything that version 5.4 includes in the changelog.
• Soon after the release of version WooCommerce 5.4, the discovery of some critical jQuery-related bugs necessitated a fix release. Because of the potential impact of these bugs, and the limited number of stores who had upgraded at the time of their discovery, version 5.4 was pulled from availability briefly to prevent the bugs from spreading while a fix release was thoroughly tested. You can read more about what happened in this recent developer advisory.
• The first beta package of WooCommerce 5.5 was released June 22, 2021 and is now available for testing. It includes numerous fixes and enhancements, such as updated versions of WooCommerce Blocks, WooCommerce Admin, and Action Scheduler. As we shared previously, this version of WooCommerce marks the drop of support for Internet Explorer 11. Take a look at the changelog to see a full list of everything that is changing.

WooCommerce Admin

• WooCommerce Admin 2.4.0 was released June 29, 2021. It includes over 100 different fixes and stability improvements, as well as enhancements to the documentation for components. You can read about everything that has changed in this version in the changelog.

WooCommerce Blocks

• WooCommerce Blocks 5.3.0 was released June 8, 2021. In addition to numerous fixes and enhancements, this version includes some important behind-the-scenes work to help third-party extensions integrate with the Cart Block. You can see a breakdown of the changes in the release post linked above.
• WooCommerce Blocks 5.4.0 was released June 23, 2021. This release includes consistency improvements to the handles for scripts and styles, a new loading state in the express payments area to display during payment processing and page redirections, and functionality that allows products to be added to the Hand-Picked Products block via their SKU.

We want to hear from you

If you’re reading this, drop us a line in the comments below to let us know how you’re liking this community news format. We want to make sure we’re sharing information and engaging with the community in an impactful and efficient way. And as always, feel free to ask us questions in the comments below or join us for Developer Office Hours on Wednesdays at 14:00 UTC in the #developers channel of the WooCommerce Community Slack.