Entries Tagged 'Projects' ↓

kiosk is progressing very well. I have started the programming some of the more significant portions of the project, such as, uploading Image, and creating Categories. Unlike cpCommerce images will not be handled during the Category, Product, Manufacturer, etc. creation. Instead, it is its’ own section. Why? This way you can upload all of your images via FTP, click a nice little link stating “Find Uploaded Images” and it will insert them into your database for you. Then all you have to do is assign them to a Product, Category, Manufacturer, or Both, or All Three!

Images are entirely reusable. So if you want to show a Product’s Image as the Category Image too, YOU CAN! And you can do it without uploading another file! I like to think kiosk is taking what cpCommerce started and taking it to a whole new level learning from its’ mistakes, and hopefully you all agree.

Well that is enough on that for now, I will update everyone once again, when I have these sections entirely done. Then you can pull it from the kiosk subversion repository and give it a try yourself.

I have settled on ASP.NET AJAX 1.0. Why you ask? Well for many reasons! One, it is written well. Lacks all the visual effects, but seriously, who needs those? It is fast, as it uses JSON, and that is a MAJOR surprise, as I figured M$ would be all over using XML. Secondly, if you pair it up with PHP for Microsoft AJAX it just flat out works nicely and costs little effort to write scripts for!

I wrote a few sample scripts using it in less than 5 minutes! 5 minutes!! I cannot stress that enough. I was amazed at the type of complexity I could write in just a few minutes of using it. Now, I am not a “big” M$ fan, but I am willing to give credit when due, and they deserve credit for this. I am truly pleased with the fact it works in Firefox, it works in IE, and it probably works in Opera (though I haven’t tested it). It has files for all languages, to handle currencies, dates, etc. Totally amazing.

I have so many plans on how to use this to perform more advance functionality in several of my applications and best of all, I didn’t have to write my own XmlHttpRequest methods.

I am experimenting with my new theme, trying to get pieces of it just right, so if you have troubles reading it, please take a screenshot of it and link to it in a Comment. The header rotates between 5 different images at random, so you may see a different one every so often.

A little about the theme…
I built the theme based a bit off of K2, in that I included the code for the Sidebar Widgets. Other than that, it does not have anything else related to K2. Some of the plugins it uses are “Collapseable Categories”, “Bunny Tags”, “IG Syntax Hilite”, and “Sociable”. There are a few more Admin related plugins, but those have nothing to do with the theme.

Depending on my satisfaction with the remaining pieces I need to work out, I may allow the theme to be downloaded, but for now, its just going to sit here until I know all is well.