Development Differences between AEM 5.6 and AEM 6

[DianahSoh]

We are currently in development of our group corporate websites.  We had started this process with our vendor on AEM 5.6.  Now that AEM 6 is out, we were wondering if we should upgrade now since we are only in the development phase or wait to go live before we go through an upgrading exercise.  As the vendor had already started work on some of the templates using AEM 5.6, we would like to enquire about the major development differences between AEM 5.6 and AEM 6 so that we could more accurately make the above decision.

I would greatly appreciate it if an Adobe AEM expert could reply to this as I was unable to get any help from Adobe Web Chat or the phone support even though our organisation had bought the platinum support.  Thank you in advance.

[jk_kendall1]

This might help :

http://docs.adobe.com/docs/en/aem/6-0/release-notes.html

[Lokesh_Shivalingaiah]

Hi Dianah,

 I would say there wouldnt be much of a development difference between AEM 5.6 and 6. But out of many features that are included in 6 version, you can think of upgrading in development phase itself for some of the below reasons

1. To use the new repository (Apache Oak) with the configurations of MK (TarMK or MongoMK).

2. Support of Apache Solr for search.

3. Some of the new features like FORMS and PHONEGAP integration might help.

[Paul_McMahon · Accepted solution]

You might want to check out some of the GEMs presentation on the new development tools available in AEM 6.0. 

New Slightly templating engine - http://dev.day.com/content/ddc/en/gems/introduction-to-sightly.html and http://dev.day.com/content/ddc/en/gems/sightly-foundation-components.html. 

The new Granite UI framework - http://dev.day.com/content/ddc/en/gems/user-interface-customization-for-aem-6.html