The first Beta version for PrestaShop 1.7.7.0 is now ready for you to test! You can now download and install it and check if all your modules and themes are working properly.
As per the news shared by the PrestaShop team, it took them more than a year to build this version and it is even bigger than the previous one with 957 merged pull requests already (final release is yet to be out) compared to 748 for version 1.7.6.0.
More than 110 external contributors participated in the development of this version, fixed bugs, enhanced the existing features and even developed new features for the merchants.
What does PrestaShop 1.7.7.0 Beta Version cover?
This version covers topics such as-
- Order Management
- Redesigning and new features of order pages
- More stability
Let’s try to understand in-depth what’s new in this release and what sort of issues have been fixed.
New Features and Improvements
1. The order pages have been redesigned and migrated to Symfony. Several new features have been added to improve efficiency and avoid going back and forth between orders.
2. PrestaShop version 1.7.7.0 comes with Fuzzy search, an improved search mechanism that has been added on the front office to improve conversions by taking misspellings and typos into account.
3. PrestaShop merchants can now add new official and non-official currencies to their store and customize their display in the desired language.
4. The field Manufacturer Part Number which is used to identify a specific product of a manufacturer is now available for Product management. It aims to improve the indexing and searching and also leaves a positive effect on SEO.
5. Under Shop Parameters>General, an option has been added to enable or disable suppliers in front-office. Previously, there was only one generic option.
6. The latest release presents an error page in the back-office. If you encounter an error in the back-office when running in production mode, you are displayed an error page instead of a blank page.
7. Merchants can now translate the email content by visiting Design>Email Theme.
8. New languages have been added.
9. Installer and localization packs have been updated to offer accurate international data for all businesses.
10. PrestaShop 1.7.7.0 brings support for emojis both on front-office and back-office. All database tables are now encoded in utf8bm4 by default, enabling the emojis support.
Improvement in Core modules
A few modules have been improved with bug fixes for increased robustness and new features for better productivity.
1. Theme customization is now available for product and category pages too apart from the homepage and they are easy to configure and customize.
2. Customer reassurance is now available on all web pages which was earlier restricted to product pages and the checkout page. It now allows you to customize the icon color and you can also add a description and a link.
Technical Improvements
1. PrestaShop 1.7.7.0 comes with updated PHP support. It has brought support for PHP 7.3 and has dropped support for PHP versions earlier than 7.1.3 for better stability.
2. jQuery has been updated to the latest version 3.4.1 in the back office and Classic & Core theme.
3. Another improvement that the latest version brings is the Automatic Form Rendering. Back-office forms are now much easy to render. You can now add form fields anywhere in the form without overriding the form template. (The feature is in the implementation phase, not all forms support it currently)
4. A new CQRS Debugger has been included in the Symfony debug war. This helps you identify which command and queries have been used to build the page you are viewing. You can make further customization by decorating or overriding it from a module.
5. There has been an improvement in tab management. You no longer require a fake legacy controller as the tab now support Symfony routes and automatic detection in modules. Moreover, it now supports the enable/disable functionality. The tab is hidden whenever a module is disabled and is gets visible again on enabling.
Bug Fixes
Over 160 bugs have been fixed for the PrestaShop version 1.7.7.0 so far that includes 11 highly unexpected bug fixes, 5 front-office and 5 back-office notable fixes.
It’s time to Switch
If you are still using the older PrestaShop version, it’s time for you to move to PrestaShop 1.7.7.0. PrestaShop community is already asking the merchants to test the latest version.
If you need any help to migrate your PrestaShop store to the latest version, you can contact us at support@knowband.com
Knowband, a leading name as an eCommerce development company provides PrestaShop plugin development services to enhance the functionality of your eCommerce store. We have hired experienced PrestaShop developers who are always dedicated to resolving your issues.
