Magento 2.3.3 Release Notes: Important Releases & Highlight Updates

Table of contents

• Magento 2.3.3 release date
• Important notice
• Magento 2.3.3 new features & updates
  • Security is enhanced more sustainably
  • Upgrades to core platform
  • Performance boosts
  • Enhancements in infrastructure
  • Improvements in merchant tool
  • Improvements in Inventory Management
  • GraphQL
  • PWA Studio
  • Google Shopping ads Channel
  • Magento Shipping
  • Vendor-developed extension enhancements
• What’s fixed in Magento 2.3.3
• Where to find the full Magento 2.3.3 release notes and support
• How to download and install Magento 2.3.3
• Wait for Magento 2.3.4 Release

Many of us must have been looking forward to the release of Magento 2.3.3 for a while, after that of 2.3.2 in late June 2019. What’s new in the latest version of this e-commerce platform that you should notice? What has Adobe done to upgrade Magento in both Commerce and Open Source editions?

According to Magento 2.3.3 release notes, this significant release offers both editions essential updates and changes in the platform, security, and payment methods. Also, the new version is claimed to include more than 170 functional fixes to the core platform and 75 enhancements in the security. Thanks to the enormous community, Magento approved and implemented over 200 contributions to the latest version. These contributions include minor core code fixes and even significant improvements in Inventory Management and GraphQL.

Magento 2.3.3 release date

Magento 2.3.3 was officially released on October 8th (08/10/2019) with the full release notes being published on the same day. The release announcement has been widely spread within the community and immediately become a hot topic for all developers and other Magento geeks/experts to discuss.

The latest versions of Magento Commerce and Magento Open Source are now available. More info: https://t.co/8syLH6Feo2 #ecommerce #MagentoCommerce #MagentoOpenSource pic.twitter.com/Hkr2UXNZDd

— Magento (@magento) October 9, 2019

Important notice

Before you go deep into what’s interesting in Magento 2.3.3, you should check whether you upgraded to the pre-release version 2.3.2-p1 earlier. If you did, it is highly recommended to upgrade to 2.3.2-p2 as soon as possible if not upgrading to 2.3.3 as that patch did not include critical security fixes. You should go through the Magento DevBlog post Introducing the New Security-only Patch Release for more information.

Other updates, including those in Page Builder, Inventory Management, Progressive Web Application, are perceived independent ones, so these updates are also released separately. Bug fixes for those are well documented independently too.

Magento 2.3.3 new features & updates

Security is enhanced more sustainably

Three main enhancements include:

• Make core payment methods comply with PSD2
• 75 important security fixes
• Critical enhancements in platform security with XSS protection (cross-site scripting) being boosted.

Enhancement #1: PSD2 regulations compliance

With the fact that the Payment Services Directive (PSD) regulations have been applied in the EU, especially when the updated version PSD2 officially goes into effect on September 14th, 2019, Magento has got to take some action accordingly with core payment methods. Specifically, most payment processing involving credit cards or bank transfers that are affected by the regulations have to be compliant with PSD2.

The Braintree payment method is now compliant with PSD2: Braintree transactions are currently verified by native Braintree 3D Secure 2.0 Authorize.net can be verified by 3D Secure through the cardholderAuthentication request field provided by a third-party service provider as CardinalCommerce The PSD2 compliance to the Cybersource and eWay payment methods, however, is put off in this release. You may have to seek extensions to help with the 3D Secure verification.

Enhancement #2: Security & core code fixes

There are 75 security enhancements in total, which are related to XSS (cross-site scripting) and RCE (remote code execution) vulnerabilities.

Upgrades to core platform

These upgrades focus on boosting platform security and supporting to comply with PCI:

• Magento 2.3.3 supports PHP 7.3.x and PHP 7.2.x
• Magento 2.3.3 supports Varnish 6.2.0
• Upgrade Zend Framework 2 components to the Active/LTS versions

Performance boosts

Store admins are now able to turn off the automatic URL rewrite generation occurring by default when the category is saved. Improve storefront loading speed by placing unnecessary CSS elements at the page bottom. However, this feature is not enabled by defaults, and you’ll have to enable it by going to Stores > Configuration > Advanced > Developer > CSS Settings, click Use CSS critical path.

Refactor the jQuery/ui library into widgets, so only needed core modules will be loaded when necessary. Display text in readable system fonts on store pages to increase page loading speed

Enhancements in infrastructure

These improvements are included in the core platform and some modules: Catalog, Sales, Checkout, UrlRewrite, Customer, and Ui. The WYSIWYG editor is upgraded to TinyMCE v. 4.9.5

Improvements in merchant tool

The tracking of user actions and Admin events has been introduced to improve admin user experience. As soon as you upgrade to Magento 2.3.3, if you allow Adobe to collect the data from Admin activity, it will be sent to Adobe Analytics for further analysis and reports. This will probably help understand users as admins so we can expect changes in the next Magento updates.

Improvements in Inventory Management

This enhancement includes many bug fixes. See the release notes here

GraphQL

Magento expanded GraphQL features and enhanced coverage for PayPal integrations, gift card functionality, and store credit. Also, mutations and queries have been implemented to support:

• Payment process through PayPal Express, Payflow Pro, Link Express Checkout as well as other methods like Authorize.net and Braintree.
• Ability of logged-in customers to convert gift cards to store credit
• Ability of guest users to apply or remove gift cards or check their gift card balance on shopping carts
• Ability to add configurable products to carts

PWA Studio

Included new hooks in Peregrine in PWA Studio 4.0.0. You can read PWA Studio releases for more details on all of the improvements

Google Shopping ads Channel

Included the Google Shopping ads Channel extension as a bundled extension.

Magento Shipping

• Improved batch-order processing, carrier integration, preview of shipping methods and checkout
• Bundled products and pre-packaged options are supported

Vendor-developed extension enhancements

Several extensions built by some third-party vendors have been included in Magento 2.3.3:

Amazon Pay

Amazon Pay is compliant with the directive PSD2 for the UK and Germany. See more here

Dotdigital

• Product catalog sync for bundled as well as custom products have been enhanced.
• Make some improvements in communications for cart abandonment.

Klarna

• Store admins now can turn off the sending of customer data.
• B2B transactions in selective markets are supported with new options
• Support PayBright

Vertex

• Support for Vertex Flexible Fields is available, allowing store admins to deliver more data to the tax device
• Additional attributes are included as defaults
• Ability to add custom fields to the Vertex connector

Yotpo

Integrated the Yotpo user-generated content management platform with Magento admin. See more (https://www.yotpo.com/)

What’s fixed in Magento 2.3.3

In Magento 2.3.3, there are nearly 200 bug fixes that focus mostly on cart & checkout, catalog, payment methods, UI, other general bug fixes and clean code, and performance improvement.

To see more about the bug fixes in Magento 2.3.3. Visit here.

Where to find the full Magento 2.3.3 release notes and support

To see the full release notes, find below:

• Open Source Magento 2.3.3 release notes
• Commerce Magento 2.3.3 release notes

To get support from Magento, go here

How to download and install Magento 2.3.3

To download Magento Open Source 2.3.3, you can visit here. Select a format you want, and then click on the Download button.

To download Magento Commerce 2.3.3, you can visit here.

You can install Magento Open Source 2.3.3 using Composer.

Back to see Magento 2.3.2 Release Notes

Wait for Magento 2.3.4 Release

I guess that you are feeling excited and curious about what is new is in the upcoming Magento update 2.3.4? Let’s wait for it and feel free to discuss and share your ideas with us in the comment box below.