what is shopify development plan

and the this session for the next uh 25,minutes or so we'll be talking about the,state of Shopify theme development so,looking at different workflows which are,available for theme developers uh recent,features which have been released for,themes and our vision as well for the,future,so just just a quick introduction on,myself my name is Liam I'm a developer,Advocate at Shopify I've been with,Shopify for about seven years now so in,that time I've been creating a lot of,content for developers looking to learn,how to build on top of Shopify I've been,creating a lot of YouTube videos blog,posts and of course being able to be,here this is my first time visiting,Australia so it's extremely exciting for,me and yeah,it's yeah amazing connecting with our,developer community so yeah over the,next two days please do grab me for a,chat would love to to connect,so for this session this is going to be,the plan for our journey first we're,going to look at where we are right now,then we're going to look at where we are,going and finally we're going to look at,how we will get there and then we should,have some time for a q a towards the end,so to answer the question where are we,right now we need to take a slight step,back into the past back to Summer of,2021 and Shopify unite which was a,milestone event for team developers we,had the launch of online store 2.0 which,enabled sections on all pages we had,meta Fields natively launched for,themes which allowed us to have much,more flexibility and personalization on,different pages we saw the relationship,of apps and themes become much more,closely combined with Team app,extensions we had of course our vision,for custom storefronts for hydrogen and,last but not least we also had the,reopening of the theme store after the,Hiatus for a while,and in the months since then we've been,able to progressively enhance many of,these features so we've,improved with the limitations that we,had on sections and blocks by making,more sections more blocks available on,pages we have more Dynamic sections,available on more pages for enhancing,meta fields we also made the developer,experience of working with Team app,extensions much much better as well so,all this to say is themes are much more,powerful more adaptable and more,valuable to Merchants than ever before,so just to look more generally at the,ecosystem in general we see you know,quite strong and steady growth we're,seeing millions of merchants are looking,to improve their store looking to,customize their online experience and,their buying experience for their,customers we firmly believe there's a,great opportunity here for developers,looking to enter this space,if we look across to the App Store in,particular last year we saw that 400,million was paid out to our app,developers just increase of over 80,percent from the previous year and of,course we reduced our Revenue share so,Merchants who earn up to their first,million dollars don't need to pay,Shopify any Revenue share and that also,transfers across to the theme store too,so team developers are able to Avail of,that too,so we don't yet have comparable figures,for the theme store but we are seeing,that there is quite strong growth here,too we've increased the number of themes,published on the team store and uh,something that we're quite proud of uh,today we actually had our 100 theme,launched today which is a really proud,Milestone that we have but I think,what's more important than the numbers,themselves is that,even with the you know increasing of,teams on the teamster we're seeing the,quality bar uh being met and exceeded,we've you know very very high standards,on the theme store for themes that are,launched so that Merchants can be very,very confident that the themes that are,available are the best that they will,have and you know this is something,we're seeing quite a lot of,one great example of this is the shapes,theme which is built by switch I think,William is is here so big shout out to,William uh who's based in Australia but,we really see themes like shapes as part,of the new generation of Shopify themes,which are really pushing the limits of,liquid pushing the limits of Shopify and,you know you can see here very vibrant,color scheme but underneath the surface,you it's a very very feature-rich team,extremely flexible very customizable and,allows Merchants to to personalize their,their visual identity of their,storefront,so this strong combination of,adaptability and opinionated design,really allows Merchants to have quite,amazing storefronts so big shout out to,switch,so now we know where we are let's talk,about where we're going,so summer editions launched earlier this,year in June and there's many questions,around some of the features one in,particular got a lot of attention,hydrogen and many developers are,wondering if hydrogen represented the,way that Shopify wants developers to,build storefronts people were asking is,hydrogen going to replace liquid and,today I want to address that concern,so the tldr is is no and you know we're,very very heavily invested in liquid,liquids as our CTO Allen says is a key,technology that allows Merchants to,customize Shopify teams we are invested,in liquid adding features and making,rendering super fast,so I think to really understand,liquid and hydrogen it's really helpful,to think about the use cases of bow,Technologies,so Shopify,has always and will always be bringing,storefronts to where customers are,whether that's on the web whether that's,mobile whether that's social media even,video games,and headless e-commerce allows Merchants,much more flexibility in terms of the,control that they have over the tech,stack how URLs are structured and Scott,will be up after me he's going to dive,much deeper into hydrogen and explore,all of the features so definitely do,stick around for his talk but we do,recognize that this particular use case,where Merchants need a very you know,flexible,infrastructure they may need to,integrate with particular software we,want to make this possible for them too,so this is our vision for hydrogen where,we want to be able to allow Merchants to,reap the benefits of shopify's back end,and all of the you know the great,features but also to be able to have,full control over their storefruit,so this is you know where we see,hydrogen and oxygen fitting in this does,however come with some costs you know,you may need uh to work with developers,you may need to have agencies on board,so Merchants when they're looking at,this as an option I need to be you know,aware of the the implications and The,Upfront investment that might be,required,so we see liquid as the more accessible,solution for the majority of merchants,particularly Merchants who are in the,more early stages of their Journey with,Shopify we also find that,Merchants may not always be very,concerned over the tech stock that's,being used they're not always very,technical so having options that are,very configurable right out of the box,is a really attractive opportunity for,them you can also go quite far with,liquid and HTML and CSS as you saw with,uh with shapes also in the Keynotes,today you saw Athens and bullish these,are great teams would really recommend,checking out the team store if you,haven't looked at it recently to see the,the new generation of themes that are,really pushing the limits here,also we have a thriving ecosystem of,developers building both for the team,store and building custom stores or,custom teams as well so this is,something we want to invest in further,I'll leave Toby our CEO with the the,last word on this and when he says that,liquid storefronts are shopify's love,letter to the web platform,we really believe liquid is here to stay,and the web is truly our North Star,this is nowhere clearer than in Don,which is able to showcase our,understanding of the web as a platform,so don't represent say HTML first,JavaScript only as is needed approach to,team development,it's shopify's First Source available,theme with performance and flexible and,accessibility at the Forefront with all,of the great features of online store,2.0 built into it,so now we know where we're going let's,talk about how we're going to get there,so I don't have enough time to go into,all of the details and all of the,announcements from Shopify editions but,I'm going to just highlight a few which,are of specific relevance to theme,Developers,so we had a update to the Shopify CLI we,had we launched the prettier plug-in for,liquid which is built into the extension,for vs code we,streamlined and updated our liquid,documentation and we made improvements,to the merchant experience of working,with themes too by streamlining the,update process so now when a merchant,wants to apply a new version it removes,a lot of the manual work that they,needed to do and there's also faster,installation duplication with themes,I mentioned our liquid documentation,this is something we're really excited,about it allows us to have much more,interactivity on our docs so you can see,here you're able to enter in any liquid,objects and see genuine output is being,appearing so this is particularly,helpful if you're learning liquid for,the first time you're able to experiment,and test out different variables,different filters different tags all,within the docs themselves so it's,almost like having a Shopify store,engine running within the docs you can,you can learn here test it out no need,to go to a development store to test out,what you're learning,of course uh we have a dark mode as well,which is I don't need to explain how,important that is and you might have,noticed too over the last few days a,nice Easter egg in our documentation,we've updated some of the pixel art to,give it a Halloween theme so uh make,sure you check that out on shopify.dev,uh one thing I did want to touch on as,well is shopify's GitHub integration I,know a lot of developers use this,already but I just wanted to highlight,some of the benefits again,and essentially this allows us to have a,two-way synchronization,for our GitHub repos Branch that's,linked to a Shopify store so any change,that you make to the branch if you merge,in changes those changes will be,populated across to a linked Shopify,store and this allows us to have much,more of a robust workflow make sure that,you're not overriding changes for,example,also you can take this one step further,you can Implement different CI workflows,and that will allow you to perform,things like Lighthouse checks and team,checks so you can analyze the,performance of your theme you can also,analyze your team for any liquids or,HTML errors that could be contained,within it and both of these use cases,are also documented in shopify.dev,this also allows you to use techniques,like git flow that allows you to have,more advanced branching models so that,you can have a very robust format for,when you're developing previewing and,releasing changes,again this just you know allows you to,have a more robust workflow ensure that,you're not overwriting changes,we really want development to be as easy,and as fun as possible which is why,we've created and launched our liquid,extension for vs code we focused on vs,code because we found it was the most,popular IDE with Team developers so,we've invested in this area and some of,the features of our extension are syntax,highlighting I know if you're spending,long hours looking at code anything that,can make it a little bit easier in the,eyes is going to be very welcome we also,have a lot of shortcuts which are,available like automatic indentation,code completion code navigation and I,mentioned team check as well that oh,that's your code so this is bundled,within the liquid extension as well so,you're able to lint your code find any,change any areas that could be,highlighted all within the editor,and also we have the the prettier,plug-in for liquid which is currently in,developer preview but uh so it does,require a little bit of manual setup,once it's set up it will allow you to,have more opinionated code formatting,One update that we launched a few weeks,ago allowed us to or will allow,developers to format Json correctly,within liquid files so anyone who's,spent time working with sections and,creating settings within sections will,definitely find that very helpful,so as you can see we're continuously,looking to ship improvements in all,areas,and there is one more thing I wanted to,touch on and that is around content and,how content can be managed and will be,managed on Shopify,so there's a lot of different ways that,you can already create and edit and,manage content within Shopify you can,create blog posts you can create static,Pages you can add content to sections,within the theme editor and what we do,see A Better Way Forward to manage,content throughout the entire platform,so that it can be centrally managed but,available everywhere so that's why we,are announcing the Shopify content,platform which is currently in beta and,will be available for stores on the,advanced and plus plans,so what the content platform will allow,you to do is you'll be able to define,specific content models using the fields,that you might already be familiar with,with meta Fields so think about things,like integers single and multi-line text,Fields raisings references to different,resources,and you'll be able to create entries for,each of your models that you're creating,you'll be able to assign different,states so a model could be a in a Draft,preview and then finally published you,can also then reference these content,entries in The Meta fields,so this will all be possible within the,Shopify admin without the help of any,custom apps or and you know it'll be a,native feature for both advancement plus,merchants,and we see a lot of potential for the,different models that could be used so,think about things like temporary,promotional banners that could be turned,on and off Global reusable components,like FAQs that could appear in different,parts of a store,there's a lot of potential here and,that's why we want to involve our,developer Community who will be able to,really push this to the limits,explain how they may use them we really,want to know about your use cases here,so as I mentioned uh you'll be able to,create these different models and,entries we also want to allow you to,publish to both hydrogen and storage,running on the just regular liquid,storefronts so we want to see you know,as much as we can have feature parity,between both approaches,as I mentioned beta is available today,and we really want you to join in the,discussion so please scan this QR code,take a picture you'll be able to find a,form here where you'll be able to apply,for the beta so just leave this up for a,moment,yes we're very very excited to see how,developers will also interpret this,so as you can see where shipping changes,and improvements across many different,areas,so where does this leave us if you only,take a few things away from this talk,hopefully it is these messages,tooling that is available for Shopify,developers is better than ever before,and will continue to improve,if you are familiar or have worked with,teams for the last few years you may,remember with Frameworks like slate we,had tools like theme kit which allowed,us to get to a certain level of,development and but the tools that are,we are you know available now that we're,improving will really get you so much,further,we see as well that the team store and,the team ecosystem is growing we really,want to invite you to to contribute and,participate in this space,we really also once getting started with,Team development to be as fun and as,easy as possible this is why we're,investing in our IDE extensions this is,why we're investing in the CLI and also,in the revamping over developer,documentation,so it's really never been a better time,to be working with teams,so the journey doesn't need to end here,there are some more opportunities to get,some hands-on experience over the next,two days later on today there is a Grays,workshop on how to improve your store,performance so being able to audit and,analyze performance also tomorrow we,have a great workshop on meta fields,which brings in some aspects of the,online store as well that is at 10 am,uh so yeah these are great opportunities,to to get more hands on time,so we'll have a little bit of time now,for uh some questions,um but just before we start that I want,to show you how you can follow up if you,want to my Twitter and email address is,here uh also again reiterate you know,the workshops are available we also have,office hours that you can join to learn,more from our team's review team and of,course as always our source of Truth for,all things theme development is,shopify.dev,and again you may have seen this uh QR,code before we really want to get as,much feedback from all our attendees,here today find out more about what kind,of content you'd like to see and get,your impressions through the the short,survey here so with that I'd like to,open it up for some questions and uh and,thanks for your attention so far

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