After spending several days investigating Magento’s 1.4.0.0 Alpha1 release I wanted to report on what I believe is coming.

If everything that is included in the alpha release makes to the final release Magento users can expect to see the following changes:

• The addition of several new payment modules
• Changes to the tax module
• Changes to the sales module
• A built in method for converting osCommerce sites to Magento sites
• Changes to the reports module
• The inclusion of additional interface packages including the Modern and iPhone interface packages

These are very ambitious changes resulting in changes and additions to the back-end configuration screens and the output to the storefront. While, in the past, I have been able to document updates to Magento in a matter of two to three days, should all these changes make it to the final release of 1.4.0.0, I anticipate that it may take more than a week to document all of these changes.

Please keep in mind that this analysis is based on a comparison of the 1.4.0.0 Alpha1 package to the current 1.3.2.3 release. I have not actually installed the 1.4.0.0 package, I have only compared the files. Other changes may be included or some of these changes may not be included in the final release of 1.4.0.0.