Zen Cart, in the early summer of 2006, has been going through profound changes, as an e-commerce application, following on from the introduction of Zen Cart 1.3.
Zen Cart 1.3 represents a seismic shift in terms of how the programs have been written and how templates are implemented. Fortunately for existing store owners and our book readers, these changes are, for the large part, invisible to the end-user.
Our existing, first, book on Zen Cart – “Zen Cart – Building an Online Store The Zen Way – For Beginners" was first published in August, 2005, when the current release version of Zen Cart, at that time, was Zen Cart 1.2.4. Throughout 2005 and early 2006, the authors have brought out revisions to our e-Book and paperback versions to keep both products in line with the prevailing Zen Cart releases. The current paperback and e-Book have been brought up to date with Zen Cart 1.2.7., the final 1.2.xx version before the release of Zen Cart 1.3.
The Zen Cart Development Team has announced an aggressive roadmap to accelerate Zen Cart through even more version releases – 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6 during the course of 2006.
We have, therefore, decided for the time being, to produce HTML and PDF supplements detailing these upcoming releases, to complement our existing e-Book and paperback versions. We may also, depending on how profound the changes are in these ‘roadmap’ releases, bring out entirely new versions of the e-Book and paperback. But as the functional changes in Zen Cart 1.3 are so minor, we have decided to issue this Zen Cart 1.3 HTML and PDF supplement.
