They are extremely happy to announce the availability of Magento version 1.3.0 for download and upgrade. This version includes numerous issue resolutions for Magento version 1.2.x and new features such as:

• Added support for customer file upload and date/time/datetime custom options
• Described all methods in WSDL for SOAP web-services to improve compatibility with .NET, Java and other languages
• Frontend Flat Catalog and improved performance. From early test and benchmarks they see up to 40% performance improvement when comparing to Magento 1.2.x both in page loads and memory usage. They will publish formal results over the next few days.

To see the full list of fixes and changes please visit the release notes page. A diff file for Magento version 1.3.0 is available here.

Upgrading an Existing Magento Version

Upgrade your existing Magento installation to 1.3.0 through the Magento Connect Manager:

• Do NOT use your live or production site. We suggest making a copy of your site and upgrading that copy first.
• Log into your Magento Connect Manager.
• Select the ‘Setting’ tab.
• Change the Preferred State to ‘Stable’, and save settings.
• For the Mage_All_Latest package select upgrade.
• Click on the ‘Commit Changes’ button. The upgrade should start.
• After upgrade is complete click on the ‘Refresh’ button.
• You should now have Magento 1.3.0 installed.