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Suggestions for an e-commerce application
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| Kerberos 2004-12-19, 3:58 pm |
| Starting January we're going to work on an open-source project of
e-commerce application.
We're going to do some research to raise ideas and to try to meet people's
needs as much as possible.
What I'd like you to do is give me your opinion about shopping carts such
as osCommerce, and tell me what you like, what you don't like, what
features are missing, what kind of database and programming language you
like most, etc.
The software will be 100% CSS driven for more consistency, flexibility and
speed.
It would help me a lot too if you could give me examples of the best
e-commerce applications and shopping carts to date.
Also if you know of very nice e-commerce web sites, or oustanding online
stores in terms of layout and usability, I'm interested.
Thank you.
--
Kerberos.
http://www.opera.com
http://www.freebsd.org
http://www.osresources.com
http://exodus.jabberstudio.org
| |
| Rastin Mehr | rmd Studio 2004-12-19, 8:57 pm |
| I like to see:
- XML-RPC communication between server side and client side
- DHTML interfaces
- functions that receive xml and create html forms on the fly, that
makes it easy to add modules and new interfaces to the system.
- Ability to direct Flash interfaces to the XML_RPC and interact with it.
- keeping all the config files as xml files not native programing
language data structures.
- object oriented approach, forget about procedural web scripting
- I'd prefer PHP, and MySql of course
- for the love of Software Engineering keep a real Graphic Designer in
your team as well.
you'd probably want to have a look at the http://www.mamboserver.com/ it
has pretty nice architecture, I am more interested in their upcoming
version 5
good luck,
Rastin
Kerberos wrote:
> Starting January we're going to work on an open-source project of
> e-commerce application.
> We're going to do some research to raise ideas and to try to meet
> people's needs as much as possible.
> What I'd like you to do is give me your opinion about shopping carts
> such as osCommerce, and tell me what you like, what you don't like,
> what features are missing, what kind of database and programming
> language you like most, etc.
> The software will be 100% CSS driven for more consistency, flexibility
> and speed.
> It would help me a lot too if you could give me examples of the best
> e-commerce applications and shopping carts to date.
> Also if you know of very nice e-commerce web sites, or oustanding
> online stores in terms of layout and usability, I'm interested.
> Thank you.
>
--
Rastin Mehr
---------------------------------------------------
rmd Studio http://www.rmdStudio.com
http://www.netphotography.com
(last update: April 12th 2004)
---------------------------------------------------
"Great spirits, have always encountered violent
opposition from mediocre minds" Albert Einstein
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| On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 15:54:56 -0200, Kerberos wrote:
> Starting January we're going to work on an open-source project of
> e-commerce application.
> We're going to do some research to raise ideas and to try to meet people's
> needs as much as possible.
> What I'd like you to do is give me your opinion about shopping carts such
> as osCommerce, and tell me what you like, what you don't like, what
> features are missing, what kind of database and programming language you
> like most, etc.
> The software will be 100% CSS driven for more consistency, flexibility and
> speed.
> It would help me a lot too if you could give me examples of the best
> e-commerce applications and shopping carts to date.
> Also if you know of very nice e-commerce web sites, or oustanding online
> stores in terms of layout and usability, I'm interested.
> Thank you.
You want to top OSCommerce? Build a store software that behaves like
Amazon. Good luck!
Karim
--
http://www.cheapesthosting.com - Innovative Web Hosting since 1998
Spam and Virus protected email - Online calendars with email notification
Camera phone photos automatic transfers to your photo album (RSS Enabled)
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| Chris Hope 2004-12-19, 8:57 pm |
| Kerberos wrote:
> Starting January we're going to work on an open-source project of
> e-commerce application.
> We're going to do some research to raise ideas and to try to meet
> people's needs as much as possible.
> What I'd like you to do is give me your opinion about shopping carts
> such as osCommerce, and tell me what you like, what you don't like,
> what features are missing, what kind of database and programming
> language you like most, etc.
> The software will be 100% CSS driven for more consistency, flexibility
> and speed.
> It would help me a lot too if you could give me examples of the best
> e-commerce applications and shopping carts to date.
> Also if you know of very nice e-commerce web sites, or oustanding
> online stores in terms of layout and usability, I'm interested.
> Thank you.
Make it work with multiple database backends. At a bare minimum you
should test and support MySQL and Postgres.
--
Chris Hope - The Electric Toolbox - http://www.electrictoolbox.com/
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| Rastin Mehr | rmd Studio 2004-12-19, 8:57 pm |
| - Make that support for MySql and PostgreSQL
- all the html has to be xhtml ofcourse :)
Rastin
Rastin Mehr | rmd Studio wrote:
> I like to see:
>
> - XML-RPC communication between server side and client side
> - DHTML interfaces
> - functions that receive xml and create html forms on the fly, that
> makes it easy to add modules and new interfaces to the system.
> - Ability to direct Flash interfaces to the XML_RPC and interact with it.
> - keeping all the config files as xml files not native programing
> language data structures.
> - object oriented approach, forget about procedural web scripting
> - I'd prefer PHP, and MySql of course
> - for the love of Software Engineering keep a real Graphic Designer in
> your team as well.
>
>
> you'd probably want to have a look at the http://www.mamboserver.com/ it
> has pretty nice architecture, I am more interested in their upcoming
> version 5
>
> good luck,
>
> Rastin
>
>
> Kerberos wrote:
>
>
--
Rastin Mehr
---------------------------------------------------
rmd Studio http://www.rmdStudio.com
http://www.netphotography.com
(last update: April 12th 2004)
---------------------------------------------------
"Great spirits, have always encountered violent
opposition from mediocre minds" Albert Einstein
| |
| Steve Sobol 2004-12-19, 8:57 pm |
| Kerberos wrote:
> Starting January we're going to work on an open-source project of
> e-commerce application.
> We're going to do some research to raise ideas and to try to meet
> people's needs as much as possible.
> What I'd like you to do is give me your opinion about shopping carts
> such as osCommerce, and tell me what you like, what you don't like,
> what features are missing, what kind of database and programming
> language you like most, etc.
Google alt.www.webmaster for most of my osCommerce comments.
The one bad thing is that if you're using Paypal or another payment service
that requires the visitor to leave your cart, the order isn't placed into the
database until AFTER the visitor returns from the cart.
--
JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/
Steven J. Sobol, G In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net
PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED)
Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids.
| |
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| In article <196kvrnv9qh2z$.gfquqn3ajbc$.dlg@40tude.net>,
Karim <karim3411@!!yahoo!!.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 15:54:56 -0200, Kerberos wrote:
>
>
Anything better than Miva.
--
To reply by email, replace the word "space" with "renault"
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| Kerberos 2004-12-20, 8:59 am |
| Em Sun, 19 Dec 2004 20:48:05 GMT, Rastin Mehr | rmd Studio
<findmyemail@mywebsite.com> escreveu:
Hi Rastin,
> - Ability to direct Flash interfaces to the XML_RPC and interact with it.
What do you mean? Do you mean Macromedia Flash? In the admin page or for
the front-end part of the e-commerce application?
> - for the love of Software Engineering keep a real Graphic Designer in
> your team as well.
Yes, there will be designers working on this part, we don't want yet
another ugly open-source application ;)
> you'd probably want to have a look at the http://www.mamboserver.com/
I like this a lot.
Thank you Rastin ;)
--
Kerberos.
http://www.opera.com
http://www.freebsd.org
http://www.osresources.com
http://exodus.jabberstudio.org
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|
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| nospam@geniegate.com 2004-12-20, 4:00 pm |
| Kerberos <me@privacy.net> wrote:
> It would help me a lot too if you could give me examples of the best
> e-commerce applications and shopping carts to date.
I wouldn't do it if I were you. :-)
In the 90's I wrote a shopping cart application (before CSS was all that
relevant) It was actually pretty popular back then. I wish I hadn't lost
control of it in one of those stock deals. Ended up p*ssing off a lot
of clients as I wasn't allowed to support them anymore. (Well, I could, but
corp. policy said I needed to charge huge amounts of $$ and run it through
a process which would likely have left the client with a headache)
> Also if you know of very nice e-commerce web sites, or oustanding online
> stores in terms of layout and usability, I'm interested.
> Thank you.
The toughest part of online shopping carts are the administrative areas,
second might be the catalog generation stuff. A basic cart itself is relatively
easy. (Depending of course on options and stuff)
These days I'd focus my attention on XML standards for catalogs, link
exchanges, stuff like that. The idea being you can use someone elses catalog
generator with another cart, or a tool that is designed just for searching
catalogs. Keep these standards as simple as possible. Design an application
that ONLY does catalogs for example. (No cart, no checkout, no paypal)
What I had touched on back then was something like "coupons", wish I could go
back and do that again. The folks I sold the source too didn't want anything to
do with development of that, which was unfortunate. Understandable since
coupons were experamental and very technical.
The idea was that if a customer purchased something at your store (or won
credits playing a game on your site, etc..) they AND your partner would recieve
some token ID's. (One sent to the partner so they knew how many coupons were
outstanding and another for the customer)
Customer could then enter this token ID and recieve discounts. (The ID's
were linked such that upon entering them you could show the customer
advertisements for them and where they came from)
Imagine buying a stereo at someones electronic store and getting coupons
for someone elses CD store.
Thats what I'd work on if I were to go the open source route. (Being careful
not to implement something that would compete with someone elses ecommerce
product, because you want them to work WITH you on the standards stuff)
There are already thousands of cart software packages out there. If someone
wants one that offers features not already available, let them hire someone
to do it.
Jamie
--
http://www.geniegate.com Custom web programming
User Management Solutions Perl / PHP / Java / UNIX
| |
| Beauregard T. Shagnasty 2004-12-20, 4:00 pm |
| Kerberos wrote:
> Code will be XHTML 1.0 Transitional ...
For new documents, shouldn't you choose Strict?
--
-bts
-This space intentionally left blank.
| |
|
| On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 12:35:52 -0500, Beauregard T. Shagnasty
<a.nony.mous@example.invalid> wrote:
> Kerberos wrote:
>
>
> For new documents, shouldn't you choose Strict?
Depends on your interpretation. Sure, Transitional is useful for a
transitional state of older pages being brought up to modern standards,
but it's also possible it's useful for designers who themselves are in
transition from old ways of designing a page to modern methods.
Of course, this transition should be taking place, with the author not
sticking with Transitional forever.
| |
| Chris Hope 2004-12-20, 4:00 pm |
| Kerberos wrote:
> Starting January we're going to work on an open-source project of
> e-commerce application.
> We're going to do some research to raise ideas and to try to meet
> people's needs as much as possible.
> What I'd like you to do is give me your opinion about shopping carts
> such as osCommerce, and tell me what you like, what you don't like,
> what features are missing, what kind of database and programming
> language you like most, etc.
> The software will be 100% CSS driven for more consistency, flexibility
> and speed.
> It would help me a lot too if you could give me examples of the best
> e-commerce applications and shopping carts to date.
> Also if you know of very nice e-commerce web sites, or oustanding
> online stores in terms of layout and usability, I'm interested.
Another suggestion, which I'm sure you would do, is to totally separate
the code and the basic templates you create for the site. osCommerce is
such a mess in this regard.
Someone else mentioned the administrative module. This is one of the
most fundamental parts of an ecommerce system and unfortunately it's
one that too often is just not easy enough to use in so many systems I
have seen. When it comes down to it, creating the catalog and shopping
cart part is the easy bit and the admin part the really time consuming
part.
--
Chris Hope - The Electric Toolbox - http://www.electrictoolbox.com/
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| Rastin Mehr | rmd Studio 2004-12-20, 4:00 pm |
| Well the client side DHTML GUI or Flash GUI can send xml_rpc messages to
the server side xml_rpc module.
I think it would be redundant to use flash enabled xml_rpc for the
administration side. I would keep the administration gui in a clean
uniform design using dhtml no matter how the user side looks like.
Administration side (the protected GUI) is mainly for data entry and
data maintenance so functionality comes first. However you'd leave the
option for future developers who may want to use Flash only GUI for your
app.
For the User side (the gui that public can use) we want to have the
option of having Flash or DHTML GUIs which can send and receive xml
messages to the server side xml_rpc module. In this way once could
develop multiple store fronts using different technologies (Flash,
DHTML, ...) for different demographics (kids, women, men, teens, ...)
and have them interact with one backend module.
mmmm ... I hope I made sense :D
Rastin
Kerberos wrote:
> What do you mean? Do you mean Macromedia Flash? In the admin page or
> for the front-end part of the e-commerce application?
--
Rastin Mehr
---------------------------------------------------
rmd Studio http://www.rmdStudio.com
http://www.netphotography.com
(last update: April 12th 2004)
---------------------------------------------------
"Great spirits, have always encountered violent
opposition from mediocre minds" Albert Einstein
| |
| Kerberos 2004-12-20, 8:58 pm |
| Em Mon, 20 Dec 2004 18:29:11 GMT, Rastin Mehr | rmd Studio
<findmyemail@mywebsite.com> escreveu:
> Well the client side DHTML GUI or Flash GUI can send xml_rpc messages to
> the server side xml_rpc module.
>
> I think it would be redundant to use flash enabled xml_rpc for the
> administration side. I would keep the administration gui in a clean
> uniform design using dhtml no matter how the user side looks like.
>
> Administration side (the protected GUI) is mainly for data entry and
> data maintenance so functionality comes first. However you'd leave the
> option for future developers who may want to use Flash only GUI for your
> app.
>
> For the User side (the gui that public can use) we want to have the
> option of having Flash or DHTML GUIs which can send and receive xml
> messages to the server side xml_rpc module. In this way once could
> develop multiple store fronts using different technologies (Flash,
> DHTML, ...) for different demographics (kids, women, men, teens, ...)
> and have them interact with one backend module.
>
>
> mmmm ... I hope I made sense :D
>
> Rastin
>
> Kerberos wrote:
>
>
Thanks Rastin. Mmmh, I like Flash, but for an e-commerce application, I
don't think it's appropriate, and it's not standard-compliant... I like
Flash for company presentations in the contact page.
--
Kerberos.
http://www.opera.com
http://www.freebsd.org
http://www.auriance.com
http://www.osresources.com
http://exodus.jabberstudio.org
| |
| Rastin Mehr | rmd Studio 2004-12-21, 3:57 am |
| Hi,
You don't have to develop any flash. Just make sure the server side
xml_rpc is well developed so it could be used by any type of client side
interactive GUI whether it is DHTML, Flash, SVG, or any other
technology. You are just providing more options to the other developers
who will utilize your eCommerce application. using what I mentioned one
could administer and maintain several store fronts from one single
administration back-end.
Flash although not properly used in many cases, is still the best
technology for client side remote scripting and GUI development. It is
more powerful than DHTML, and faster than Java Applets, and it is very
cross platform. The drawback could be SEO, but for some interfaces SEO
is not needed at all.
Rastin
Kerberos wrote:
> Thanks Rastin. Mmmh, I like Flash, but for an e-commerce application, I
> don't think it's appropriate, and it's not standard-compliant... I like
> Flash for company presentations in the contact page.
>
--
Rastin Mehr
---------------------------------------------------
rmd Studio http://www.rmdStudio.com
http://www.netphotography.com
(last update: April 12th 2004)
---------------------------------------------------
"Great spirits, have always encountered violent
opposition from mediocre minds" Albert Einstein
| |
| metagrapher@gmail.com 2004-12-21, 3:57 am |
| I agree with you Rastin. And with 90% estimated saturation of the
Flash 6 Player the issue of downloading a plug-in virtually
dissappears. Flash is far superior to Java Applets, though I don't
think anyone could argue the opposite. The question is typically
between DHTML and Flash. I am pretty sure that through use of
JavaScript, CSS, and XHTML I could effectively produce virtually the
same result as I could in Flash. However, it would take me forever to
make sure that it was standards compliant and cross-platform/browser
independent. Take Gmail for example. As far as interfaces go it's
magnificent. It's fast and efficient and does not require me to
download plugins. However, it currently only functions on 3 browsers
due to the intensity of the DHTML driving the interface. I guess you
could say that Flash has this same limitation, however, in that there
isn't necessarily a plugin for all browsers. Regardless, the battle
between Flash and DHTML will live on for awhile. In the mean time,
learn to do both.
As for your e-commerce application, I thusly have to agree with Rastin.
It should easily support a variety of client-side technologies, and
Flash is definitely prominent enough to merit consideration.
| |
| Steve Sobol 2004-12-21, 3:57 am |
| metagrapher@gmail.com wrote:
> I agree with you Rastin. And with 90% estimated saturation of the
> Flash 6 Player the issue of downloading a plug-in virtually
> dissappears. Flash is far superior to Java Applets, though I don't
> think anyone could argue the opposite.
Depends on the application. Flash is probably very much better than Java for
most of the purposes for which you'd use Flash.
--
JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/
Steven J. Sobol, G In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net
PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED)
Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids.
| |
| Rastin Mehr | rmd Studio 2004-12-21, 3:57 am |
| DHTML would have been great if all browsers had a consistent
implementation of W3C standards, but right now every browser is using a
different implementation of Javascript DOM and developing cross browser
solutions sometimes take forever to debug. The uncertainty of time
becomes problematic for developing larger web information systems which
utilize larger number of interactive GUIs.
Flash has a more or less consistence behavior, and Action Scripting has
a much more comprehensive library of functions than Javascript DOM. You
can almost be sure that your solution could be done in a certain time
period and it will work on all platforms.
Topic of DHTML vs. Flash is very case specific, and depending on
situations once could be a better solution than the other.
Rastin
metagrapher@gmail.com wrote:
> I agree with you Rastin. And with 90% estimated saturation of the
> Flash 6 Player the issue of downloading a plug-in virtually
> dissappears. Flash is far superior to Java Applets, though I don't
> think anyone could argue the opposite. The question is typically
> between DHTML and Flash. I am pretty sure that through use of
> JavaScript, CSS, and XHTML I could effectively produce virtually the
> same result as I could in Flash. However, it would take me forever to
> make sure that it was standards compliant and cross-platform/browser
> independent. Take Gmail for example. As far as interfaces go it's
> magnificent. It's fast and efficient and does not require me to
> download plugins. However, it currently only functions on 3 browsers
> due to the intensity of the DHTML driving the interface. I guess you
> could say that Flash has this same limitation, however, in that there
> isn't necessarily a plugin for all browsers. Regardless, the battle
> between Flash and DHTML will live on for awhile. In the mean time,
> learn to do both.
>
> As for your e-commerce application, I thusly have to agree with Rastin.
> It should easily support a variety of client-side technologies, and
> Flash is definitely prominent enough to merit consideration.
>
--
Rastin Mehr
---------------------------------------------------
rmd Studio http://www.rmdStudio.com
http://www.netphotography.com
(last update: April 12th 2004)
---------------------------------------------------
"Great spirits, have always encountered violent
opposition from mediocre minds" Albert Einstein
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