Over the last months, we have been actively working on the Matomo 3 release and we want to introduce you to the changes that we have done so far. They include a new and modern UI redesign, new widgets for your dashboard, and technical improvements under the hood.
New Matomo 3 UI
Based on Material Design we have revamped the user interface which is now more responsive, more usable and faster. While the UI is not yet finished, we invite you to check it out already and to let us know what you think.
This new Matomo material design is a visual language that synthesizes classic principles of good design with the innovation and possibility of technology and science.
More responsive
Matomo 3 will look and feel much better on your mobile phone and tablet. Many elements have been improved: the menus, the segment editor and dashboard selector, the widgets, the settings pages and most other pages so you can fully experience and enjoy Matomo on any device!
Improved usability
We have updated the menu structure, the dashboard selector as well as the footer in reports to make your life easier when using Matomo. We love to keep these complicated things simple. There are also many other tiny improvements that you will appreciate.
The Zen Mode lets you view in full screen your analytics reports and dashboards. Users love this feature and it can now be accessed by pressing “z” key.
Faster
To make the Matomo interface faster, we have refactored most of our CSS, HTML and JavaScript and moved more and more of our code into the client. As a result, Matomo now needs to reload the page much less often! For example when you change the date or change the segment, Matomo will now load the reports instantly. To improve performance even further, Matomo will now load multiple reports on a single page in parallel.
Native fonts
Over the last months more and more web services have started using system fonts, and so will Matomo 3. System fonts look better, improve language support and give you a more native, familiar feeling.
For more details and screenshots have a look at the pull request for the Matomo 3 UI update.
New widgets
With the “Latest Matomo Plugin Updates” widget you won’t miss any newly added or updated plugin anymore. This will help you learn about and discover the useful plugins and themes available on the Marketplace.
Super users can now see at a glance the current state of the Matomo system, thanks to the new “System Check” and “System Summary” widgets.
API Changes
Matomo is the leading open analytics platform, highly customisable and extensible thanks to a flexible plugins architecture and a design based on APIs. In this new major Matomo 3 release, we significantly improve the foundation of our open platform and several of its core APIs.
The new Widgets and Reporting API makes it possible to add reports and widgets to any existing reporting page. In the past, reporting pages had to be created manually which was time consuming and it was hard to maintain a consistent look across different reporting pages. Now reporting pages are generated automatically by the Matomo platform.
The Plugin Settings API was changed to improve performance and to let plugin developers customize the Websites Manager. This is one step towards our goal to let users not only manage websites but also mobile apps, cars, coffee machines or any other thing.
To see a full list of changes in the Matomo 3 analytics platform, have a look at the developer changelog.
Developer docs
The Matomo Developer Zone is full of guides and API references to help developers understand, integrate and extend Matomo. As some APIs have changed in the Matomo 3 release it is now possible to select the Matomo version in the top right corner of the developer zone.
We are updating guides for Matomo 3 and added a Matomo 2 -> Matomo 3 Migration Guide for plugin developers. Many other guides were updated such as Menus, Custom Report and Widgets.
Release date
The first Matomo 3 beta release will be available in the next four weeks. Beta testers automatically receive the update if they are subscribed to the “Latest Beta” release channel. The final Matomo 3 release will be ready before the end of the year. If you want to give it a try, you can either use Matomo from Git and check out the “3.x-dev” branch, or download Matomo 3 from GitHub.
Closing thoughts
With faster & more beautiful reports, better APIs and more stability, Matomo 3 is a big step forward for all Matomo users. As our mission is to create, as a community, the leading international open source web analytics platform that gives every user full control of their data, we are very excited to introduce you to this upcoming release.
We now offer Custom Development services if you like to sponsor a new feature or bug fix, or if you have any custom requirements. And if you use Matomo Analytics (formerly Piwik Analytics) to grow your business and need quality help, contact the Matomo analytics experts to get started.
Until our next Matomo 3 dev update, Happy analysis!
