Magento 2.4.0 Release – Feature Highlights, Upgrades and Improvements

29 Jul 2020

Mike Patel

Magento 2.4.0 Release – Feature Highlights, Upgrades and Improvements

The two biggest reasons to stay up to date with Magento versions are security and user experience. Every Magento release is intended to make your e-commerce more secure and perform better.

Magento, an Adobe Company recently released version 2.4.0 of Magento Commerce and Magento Open Source. The new Magento 2.4.0 comes with over 100 new fixes to the core code, 30+ security enhancements, and by default enablement of Two-Factor Authentication in the Admin.

Let’s have a look at the highlights of this release:

Two-factor Authentication (2FA)

2FA is now enabled by default and can’t be disabled. This authentication will make it harder for malicious users to access the Admin without authorization.

Content Security Policy (CSP) Improvements

Magento Framework now has the SecureHtmlRenderer available in .phtml templates for script tags and whitelisting of inline style support. These scripts and styles were not permitted with the default configuration of CSP.

Platform Upgrades

Magento 2.4.0 introduces support for

PHP 7.4 – Magento 2.4.0 supports PHP 7.4. All testing of this new Magento version is performed on PHP 7.4. Though you can install Magento 2.4.x with PHP 7.3 using PHP 7.4 is recommended. PHP 7.1 and 7.2 are deprecated after this release.
Elasticsearch 7.6.x – With the release of Magento 2.4, the latest version of Elasticsearch, Elasticsearch 7.x becomes the default catalog search engine for both Magento Commerce and Open Source. Elasticsearch version 2.x code is removed, and Elasticsearch 5.x is deprecated. However, Elasticsearch v6.8 is still supported in Magento 2.3.x and 2.4.0.

Also, the MySQL catalog search engine is removed from Magento 2.4 and replaced with Elasticsearch as the default search engine.

MySQL 8.0. – Magento 2.4.x supports the version 8.x of MySQL. MySQL 5.7 is supported for Magento 2.4.x but you can’t host Magento 2.4.x with a MySQL 5.6 database.

Infrastructure Improvements

The Magento 2.4 release contains enhancements to core quality and modules, including Catalog, Customer Account, CMS, Order Approval Workflow feature for B2B, Import, Inventory Management, Cart and Checkout.

Performance Upgrades

Magento 2.4 introduces a new way of invalidating customer sections data to avoid a known local storage issue while section.xml invalidations are active. Also, with multiple optimizations to Redis performance, Magento 2.4 will minimize the number of queries to Redis – performed on each Magento request.

Magento Functional Testing Framework

MFTFv3.0.0 will allow creating custom actions beyond the test framework, nested assertion syntax, sub-folder in test modules, schema updates for test entities, and static check to check and report references.

New Media Gallery

Magento 2.4 Media Gallery will offer a new, searchable interface to search, filter, and sort images up to 30x faster. Merchants can also use this new media tool for evaluating storefront image usage.

Adobe Stock Integration v2.0

Merchants will now be able to find any Adobe Stock preview image in their Media Gallery. This will reduce the number of steps required for licensing any stock preview image.

Removal of Third-party Payment Methods as Core Integration

With Magento 2.4.0 release, the payment method integrations for Authorize.Net, eWay, CyberSource, and Worldpay have been removed from the core code.

Fixed Issues

Email templates can now be previewed via Admin > Marketing > Communications > Email Templates when JavaScript minification is enabled.
Improvement in performance of the catalog_product_price re-index operation for bundle products.
Prompt a message when products in the mini cart become out-of-stock before checkout. Once the out-of-stock item is removed, Magento will display the Proceed to Checkout button, which was not available in previous Magento versions.
You can now duplicate and save all CMS pages.
Customers subscribed as a guest to newsletters are no longer unsubscribed even after registering for a new account.

Upgrade your Magento store to Magento 2.4.0 offer a more intuitive user experience and increase your e-commerce sales.

If you have any questions or are looking to partner with an e-commerce agency to improve your Magento website design, development, security or user experience get in touch with one of our e-commerce specialists here at ioVista.

Mike Patel

Mike Patel is a digital marketing enthusiast, innovator and President of a leading Digital and E-commerce Development Agency in Dallas, Texas. Mike holds a BS, Computer Science degree from Wayne State University and is a key player in the E-commerce development and digital marketing industry since 2004. The scope of technology in his extensive experience of more than 15 years ranges from Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay Per Click) management, E-commerce SEO, Google Shopping Ads and more.