[WEB400] Re: RPG Shopping Cart,

["Richard B Baird" <rbaird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nathan,

nice work!  I like it a lot.  clean and tight.  and I like the check boxes
and scroll bar quantities, and the fact that it appears to update the
shopping cart immediately, rather than having an add-to-cart button.  Or
does it?  what causes the database to be updated with the new quantity?
any valid link on the page?

I know this is just an early prototype, but here are a few suggestions for
improvement.

one problem I ran into is when I tried a 'rightclick/back' - it lost it's
way...   I know you display it without the browser tool bar so they have to
try really hard to get it to do a browser back, but i think you might be
able to go a tad further.

I can't remember off the top of my head how, but i'm pretty sure there is a
way to disable the 'rightclick' menu in your shopping window.  maybe
someone else can help on the how.

also, since you can't do a browser 'back', you might want to provide a
programatic 'back' button - on both the shopping and the cart details page.
>From a shopping page it's more intuitive than clicking on the category
links at the top. and from the cart page, they should be able to return to
the last shopping page they were on - instead of having to drill back down
from the top of the categories.

one more thing, what happens if you have, say hundreds of items in a single
category?   does it load all of them or a page at a time?  it would be nice
if it loaded 20 or so at a time.  this would of course require 'next' and
'back' navigation, and maybe even 'page x of 1 2 3 4 5 6' kind of thing.
most shopping carts apps i've seen have this feature - it is important when
someone is on a slow dialup line, that they don't have to wait for hundreds
of items to load up, and so they might navigate to any page in the list.

as i said, i know it's a work in progress...  you've probably already
thought of most of this.

rick


------original message------
Friends,

This is a work in progress.  And I just discovered that some of the
Javascript only works with MS Internet Explorer.  Dang, it's tough
supporting multiple browsers!  But some of you may find this interesting.
It's the start of a shopping cart application.

http://www.relational-data.com/rdweb/shopmenu.html

The application is intended to support a large super market.
Unfortunately,
my data is terribly limited.  Just limit your shopping to the "Butter and
Margarine" aisles of the "Dairy" section, and you'll get a feel for how the
program works.

For those interested in the RPG source code, try clicking on the "Help"
hyperlink.  It would be nice to get some feedback.

Thanks,

Nathan M. Andelin
www.relational-data.com