New improvements thanks to Adobe Commerce 2.4.6

As of March 14, 2023, Adobe is launching their latest version, which is 2.4.6. In this blog, we would like to tell you more about this latest release from Adobe (formerly Magento). There are no less than 300 changes in this update, making it definitely worth checking out this release.

Both Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce switched to PHP 8.1 in the 2.4.4 release, but in release 2.4.6 Adobe takes it a step further by also supporting PHP 8.2. But not only the PHP version is increased in terms of compatibility, a lot of other platform improvements were also made in this release, namely:

• Composer 2.2.x
• Redis 7.0.x
• ElasticSearch 8.x
• MariaDB 10.6

Also the outdated JavaScript libraries have been updated to the most recent versions, and further part of the Zend Framework component, as well as some Symfony dependencies have been updated.

Security

In addition to the PHP upgrade, eight security enhancements have been provided. One important one is the switch at integration tokens. Previously, an integration token could be used as a standalone key for token-based authentication. However, this behavior has been disabled by default because of the security implications of a never-expired access token. This means that authentication now runs via OAuth, so this change will impact all of your integrations. 

Performance & Scalability.

The performance of the product grid has been improved by reducing the number of products displayed. In addition, a new API REST endpoint is provided to import up to 100,000 records per minute with high performance.

For Commerce Cloud customers, improved order processing is also provided.

GraphQL

As GraphQL is becoming increasingly popular, improvements are also provided for it:

• Improved response time of some Magento 2 APIs related to querying products in categories with category rights enabled.
• Improved the display performance of the category tree in GraphQL.
• Response time of bulk shopping cart operations via GraphQL has been improved.

Other points of interest

In addition, many other quality improvements have been provided, such as some bugs in the use of Google reCAPTCHA. Also, unless the ordered product is out of stock, the full page cache is no longer cleared after the order is executed. Previously, the cache for the category was cleared when an order was made.

For both Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce, the 2.4.6 release also includes some functional improvements. For example, Adobe IMS, the Identitiy Management System, is no longer included in the code base by default.

Accessibility updates

Some improvements were again provided for screen accessibility as well, such as adding descriptive names to buttons throughout the checkout flow. In addition, keyboard-only users can now access all page functionality. Previously, buyers could not access sub-navigation links using only keystrokes.

Bug fixes

Of course, a lot of bug fixes were still provided, both for the cache, shopping basket, checkout, catalog and products. A complete list can be found in the release notes, which can be found here.

Furthermore, some improvements were also made for customers using the paying Adobe Commerce version. Among other things, the B2B functionality was extended in terms of GraphQL schema and improvements were made to customer segments, admin action logs and many other features. A full list of issues that have been fixed can be found in the release notes. These can be found here for Adobe Commerce.