Next week Miva Merchant will be releasing Miva Merchant 5.5 PR8, it contains 199 bug fixes that exist in PR7 as well as more than 54 new features.

And here is a preview to our (Glendale Design’s) first live Miva Merchant PR8 site (released a couple weeks ago):

Kelmark Furnishings

Before you’ll be able to upgrade to PR8, you’ll need to make sure your Miva Empresa Engine is 5.10 (5.12 is highly recommended) or higher and you have the GD library configured in your mivavm.conf. This is normally requested through your hosting provider. We will be testing for the proper engine and GD library configuration before allowing the upgrade to continue. If your upgrade fails on this step, this will NOT impact your live store or admin in any way. Once you get your engine properly upgraded and configured you’ll be able to restart the upgrade and continue with the process.

New Miva Merchant PR8 Features:

• Products may now have multiple images. The multiple image subsystem has the following major functionality:
  • Dynamic resizing of images for thumbnails and primary image display
  • Lightbox support, allowing display of a larger image than the primary display
  • Dynamic swapping of images as attributes are changed
  • Named image types
  • For compatibility, the PR7 and earlier product image fields still exist, and have been moved onto the primary Product tab of the Add/Edit Products screen
• A new reporting subsystem has been added that allows detailed analysis of sales data
• A new attribute type has been added for “swatch” attributes, which allow the user to click on an image to change the attribute selection.
• A completely revamped Import subsystem has been provided:
  • Configuration settings may be saved between imports
  • The import parser has been centralized, and now properly handles “standard” delimited text files
  • Realtime progress and log information is displayed while importing data
  • Drag and drop file upload is supported to begin an import
• A new module, “Template Batch Reports,” now manages the SHIPMENT_PICKLIST and ORDER_INVOICE screens, treating them as batch reports, and allows additional batch report/screen combinations to be created and managed. This module is installed in newly created stores by default
• A new module, “Template Order Emails,” replaces all of the previous email fulfillment modules and allows more advanced configuration of emails:
  • Everything is a true page template
  • Can manually trigger the sending of emails
  • Can send emails on any number of events
  • Can have an unlimited number of different emails
  • This new module is installed by default for newly created stores instead of the old meremail and custeml modules\
• The Secure Root Directory for Graphics may now be separately configured from the Non-Secure Root Directory for graphics, which fixes behavior in shared SSL certificate environments.

Runtime/StoreMorph Changes:

• The Basket Contents components now allow display of product images on the basket contents page.
• Tokens provided by many component modules have been made more consistent and comprehensive
• Attribute Inventory variant part products are now available in the order and basket contents components.

Administrative Changes:

• The batch edit screen hover effect no longer applies a bold font face to avoid table redraws
• The character set for a store may now be centrally configured, and will affect both runtime and admin, for proper display of accent characters in both locations.
• When generating product variants, the user may now control the delimiter used when constructing product codes for part products
• Administrative buttons now disable themselves and display “Processing…” while the system is performing their action
• Administrative buttons are now disabled while switching tabs
• Administrative Delete buttons have been moved away from other buttons and now clearly indicate what they delete
• Administrative Delete buttons are now displayed only on the first tab of a screen to prevent confusion
• Administrative Update buttons have been hidden on tabs where they do not directly modify the displayed settings (Product: Inventory Variants, for example)
• Orders may now be filtered by Payment Status:
  • Authorized with $0 Captured
  • Authorized with Partial Capture.
  • Captured and Not Shipped.
  • Shipped and Not Captured
• Manage Orders and Manage Shipments are now sorted by Order ID descending by default
• Payment may now be captured for multiple orders, or an entire batch of orders, from the Manage Orders screen
• A user may now create a batch containing all unbatched orders by searching for Unbatched Orders and pressing the Create Batch button with no orders selected
• The Manage Orders and Manage Shipments screens have been modified to include the old-style pagination controls and now display “Loading…” when refreshing their contents
• The list of order tabs is now refreshed after editing order charges as the recalculate button may change the current shipping module for the order.
• A new “Batch Report” button on the Manage Orders screen allows users to run legacy or new-style batch report modules on a selection of orders or an entire order batch
• Shipments may now be batched, similar to Orders
• Tracking numbers for an entire batch of orders may be entered by searching for the batch and pressing the “Enter Tracking Numbers” button with no shipments selected
• A new “Batch Report” button on the Manage Shipments screen allows users to run new-style shipment batch report modules on a selection of shipments or an entire shipment batch
• The Product Lookup screen now has the ability to filter its results to Active products
• More advanced Order Tab dialog in Manage Orders which allows JavaScript and other complicated functionality.
• Modules may now extend json.mvc
• Modules may now alter the HEAD tag content of administrative screens
• Modules may now add tabs to all Batch Edit screens
• For 5.70 or newer API version modules Module_xxx_BatchEdit_Update is now called with a “null” product, category, customer, etc… when the Update button is pressed and an item was not being edited in place (so that the modules can update the contents of their tabs).
• The current stock level of products may now be displayed and edited on the Product Batch Edit screen
• Component modules with tabs that appear on all pages and the Edit Store screen now only save their settings if you are viewing their tab. A notification now appears if modifications are made to the settings and the user attempts to switch off of the component’s tab(s) without first saving the settings.