Core 17 Beta Released

[burch]

Hello All,

This evening, we will be releasing our core-17 patch into beta. The beta period will run for roughly one week, and if no major issues are found, core-17 will be rolled into production on Monday, April 13th.

Getting core-17
The recently release feature-upg-3 patch introduced the concept of an "Upgrade Stream." From the "Upgrade Settings" tab on your "Domain Settings" screen, change the Upgrade Stream to "Beta". If you don't have an "Upgrade Stream" option, you need to install feature-upg-3.

When you run the Upgrade Wizard a warning message will be displayed informing you that you are installing beta software.

It's especially important to note that the current streaming upgrade system doesn't have a mechanism for us to release incremental updates within the beta. Therefore, if we make changes to core-17 during the beta period, you'll have to roll back to a pre-core-17 backup (or fresh installation) and reinstall the patch. If we update the core-17 package on the update server, we will notify you here.

The next couple posts in this thread will be the current core-17 release notes and a discussion of developer-specific features.

[burch]

Release Notes

Issues addressed with Miva Merchant 5.5 patch core-17:

Admin
Number Based Sort
o Reworked the Number Based Sort feature.
o Improved the way Number Based Sort resolves conflicts. Removed validation of duplicate entries.
o Hitting the Enter key on any box now works the same way as the Update button.
o Hitting the Tab and Shift-Tab keys on any Number Based Sort box should now cycle to the Next/Previous Order box.
o Added the Number Based Sort feature to Product Attributes and Options.
o Added the Number Based Sort feature to Related Products.

Statistics
o Best Sellers should now sort properly based on the number sold counter.

Products/Categories
o Added a new tab to Edit Product screen - Categories.
This tab allows you to assign this product to multiple categories at once.

Product/Category META tag improvements.
o A new tab has been added to Edit Store - META Tag Settings.
o These settings give you the ability to add custom Product/Category META tags.
You could then change the contents value for those tags in your Product/Category META settings.

Other
o Added Product/Category/Customer Custom Fields to provisioning.

Runtime
o Fixed a bug with payment modules that go offsite, place an order and don't come back; causing the inventory to be improperly refunded when store owners delete expired shopping carts.
o Order Minimums no longer take Basket Charges into account to meet the minimum required amount.
o Added a new option in Edit Store >> Customer Fields settings - Primary Address.
This option controls whether the Shipping or Billing Customer Fields are shown first in runtime.

Storemorph:
o Textarea fields are now stretched to fit the entire size of your window.
o You can now use the Tab key inside the Storemorph Textarea fields to format your code.

Module Updates
Payment
New Payment modules
o Amazon Simple Pay.
o Checkout by Amazon.

AuthorizeNet
o AuthorizeNet no longer uses a commerce library for transaction processing.
o Fixed a bug where some unencoded data caused errors if a customer entered a comma into any of the Ship To/Bill To fields.
o Added a new payment field to Edit Order screen, Transaction Status. This field describes the transaction as Authorized or Authorized & Captured.

Google Checkout
o Added a help link for Integrating with Google Analytics.

LinkPoint
o The Product Description that gets passed to LinkPoint Gateway is now limited to 120 characters.

PayFlow Pro
o Fixed a bug where the request_id field (required for communicating with the gateway) was not always unique which caused Order Processing errors.

Shipping
U.S.P.S. Online Rate Calculation
o Added two new Shipping Methods. USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate Envelope and USPS Priority Mail Large Flat Rate Box.

Import/Export
Import Categories from Flat File
o Added Custom Fields support for Categories.

Export Categories to Flat File
o Added Custom Fields support for Categories.

Sales Tax
o Added a new field - NonTax Description. This field controls the "Tax free delivery outside EU" text.

Other
Microsoft Live Search
o Changed the initial module setup to provide more status and instructions,
especially for installing the template changes when the automatic install
doesn't work correctly.

o The module now tracks when changes are made that (might) affect the
published datafeed. When there are such changes, notifications are
displayed in several places in the admin until the next publish is done.

o When publishing the data feed, skip products with a price of zero. At
the end give a count of those products skipped.

Modified the handling of the Image URL field in the publish file as follows:
o If there is no full size image, use the thumbnail.
o If there is also no thumbnail leave the field empty.
o If there is an image that starts with http:// or https://, do not prepend
the base_url.

Custom Fields
o Added support for Custom Category Fields.
o Product Field Values now support more than 254 characters. Text larger than 254 characters is now stored in value_long field.
o Customer Field Values now support more than 254 characters. Text larger than 254 characters is now stored in value_long field.

Developer Notes
o If DB_Type_Char function receives a value higher than 254, it automatically converts the field to MEMO type.
o Fixed a bug that prevented popup errors containing single quotes from being displayed.
o Altered the Custom Product Field Values indexes to be unique.
o Altered the Custom Customer Field Values indexes to be unique.

[burch]

core-17 Beta 3 Released

core-17 Beta 3 has been pushed to the update system:

1. The PayPal Website Payments Standard module has been updated to allow the merchant to configure whether a PayPal shopper must have an address associated with their PayPal account.

2. A bug was fixed in the Custom Fields module that prevented users from changing custom field values that existed prior to the upgrade.

1. The Google Checkout module's version was not incremented, which meant it wasn't properly updated during patch install.

core-17 beta 3 identifies itself as such in the release notes, viewable by selecting "Review Installed Updates" from the "Upgrade Settings" tab on the Domain screen, or by manually reviewing patches to be installed from the Upgrade Wizard.