Microsoft is showing a little different attitude these days. They have been extremely open with Windows 7, making beta copies really easy for just about anyone to get their hands on. They have been, and this is really a shift, very attentive and responsive to the "community at large" during the beta. And now it seems they are going to be releasing the shipping version on time or even a LITTLE EARLY! This is a monumental shift!!! Finally, just to punctuate the whole thing, they have recently announced some substantial discounts for early adopters! See article at Information Week.

It looks like Microsoft is working overtime to drum up business and may be a little worried, you think?

I say it's about time!

For tooooooo long Microsoft has used it's monolithic market share as a reason to cram its over bloated, under tested, security hole ridden software on its nearly captive customer base... Then, finally they loaded that last straw onto the poor camel's back - Vista. The user community revolted by simply staying put with Windows XP. Basically staging an "upgrade strike". At the same time, larger numbers than ever before decided to make the switch to the Mac. Finally with an eroding customer base and upgrade sales flat lining Microsoft had themselves an "oofdah! moment and stared smelling the coffee burning... In the OS department anyway.

Have they truly seen the light? Sadly it would appear, No. Their approach to .Net or nothing, to non standards based HTML rendering in Outlook their refusal to work with competitors on industry standards joint initiatives, still shows them for what they are... A cranial-up-rectal bully that just doesn't get or care how to play well with others.

For now, out of all this, at least I may get a reasonable price on a finally stable OS to run Open Office, ColdFusion, PHP, CS4, MySQL... you know, all my anything-but-Microsoft apps on.. And for that at least I'm grateful.

I hope, selfishly I'll admit, that Windows 7 is all it is supposed to be, and what Vista should have been. But at the same time I hope it doesn't do too well. I'd like to see Microsoft sweat some more. I'd like to see them realize that a web standards compliant Outlook would actually be the RIGHT long term choice! That Internet Explorer should actually support WC3 (World Wide Web Consortium) standards. Maybe, if Apple continues to erode their base and they continue to lose market share Microsoft will actually see the light. They, and the rest of us will be the better for it.

I'll admit, we have to give Microsoft credit... In the early days they took us to places that few could have imagined, but for a long time now they have turned to the dark side where power and control are far more important to them than progress and innovation or even quality.  I don't want to see them go down, I just want to see them be a productive part of the development community, to be a force for progress rather than an obstacle.

Let's hope they will take the lesson learned in the OS department and move the rest of their efforts in the same direction.

Our new Customer Contact eNewsletter plugin allows you to send emails to customers and other contacts in your Cartweaver database. Sending email through a browser is a little different than using a service, if you have not done it before -- the execution time will vary depending on the speed of your server and number of emails you are creating. A list of 1000 emails might take 1-3 minutes to complete, and bigger lists can take proportionally longer. I used to send to lists of 50,000-100,000 for a large company, and the browser would be open for up to an hour. Sending personalized email can be a slow process.

As with anything, it's probably a good idea to test with smaller lists first, or lists consisting of your own email address, however there are a few things you can do if you are timing out or having other difficulties with larger lists:

For PHP:

1. make sure you have a valid file and/or email address in the CWError.php file. This can help track down problems
 
2. make sure that your php.ini setting for max_execution_time is set high enough for the large list. By default the maximum is 30 seconds, which can get you through a small list, but to send 1000 messages your maximum might need to be 100-200 seconds or more. Your page will take the full time to complete.
 
3. Make sure web server timeouts are large enough. Consult your web server documentation about page request timeouts.
 
For ColdFusion:

1. Make sure the ColdFusion setting for page execution is large enough, if it is enabled, or put a <cfsetting> tag in your cwcc_SendEmails.cfm file. This article talks about ColdFusion timeouts:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/194/tn_19438.html

2. Make sure web server timeouts are large enough. Consult your web server documentation about page request timeouts.

Early Bird pricing for CFUnited ends next Tuesday, June 30th! If you plan on attending what promises to be THE CF Developer's conference of 2009, might as well get your tickets at a discounted price.

During the week of March 16 - 20, 2009, Authorize.Net will be deprecating all legacy support for the SSL 2.0 protocol. Changes have recently been made to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) which have made the use of SSL 2.0 a PCI DSS violation.

Due to this change, it is critical that you update any applications or integrations that may be using the SSL 2.0 protocol to support the more current SSL 3.0/TLS 1.0 protocols. Failure to upgrade your applications or integrations may result in a lost ability to successfully process transactions via the Authorize.Net Payment Gateway.... contact Authorize.net for the rest.

A few words of advice if you are new to developing shopping cart web sites. Just because you found an affordable ecommerce app that is easy to integrate - such as Cartweaver - doesn't mean you should be doing shopping cart sites for cheap! Sure Cartweaver provides a real leg up and makes things so much quicker and easier, but a fully dynamic, database driven, ecommerce site still has complexities and many times unforeseen complications, that have nothing to do with Cartweaver itself. There can be host issues. Issues with the payment Gateways. Merchant accounts, you know, all the elements involved in an dynamic, professional, ecommerce site. Then there's the client who springs that infamous "could you just...[ fill in blank here ]" feature request or change orders on you. The point is, when you are creating an ecommerce site for a client you are stepping into a more complex role than just a web designer. You also end up being a consultant. Be sure you charge accordingly! The end result is both you and your clients will take your job more seriously, and you'll make more money. Both of those are good things!

Hope you find this helpful.

As I posted here eirlier, I'll be speaking at this year's CFUnited. While I'm there I'll also be posting videos to facebook and tweeting the goings on and new goodies that Adobe is rumored to be announcing at this years event. While CFUnited is pretty ColdFusion focused, it is rumored that Adobe will be spilling the beans on a number of things that will effect much more than just the CF crowd. If you'd like to be "in the know" as these events happen, then "Friend me up" on facebook and twitter!!!

Facebook   -   Twitter

I look forward to being a real "blabber mouth" at the event and sharing as much info as time, technology and bandwidth will allow.

I figure once Adobe says it at CFUnited... It's public and ok to share!

Hello, I'm Angela Buraglia and I'm the Extension Developer for Cartweaver. This is my first entry for the Cartweaver Blog!

Recently we had a handful of reports from customers who could not install Cartweaver3PHP.mxp into Dreamweaver CS3 or CS4 using Windows XP or Vista. These customers would usually get either a Runtime Error or a simple error message that read "Parameter incorrect." I know; that's a pretty unhelpful error message, isn't it?

It's a not typical that we run into an issue that can't be resolved quickly. In fact the extension portion of Cartweaver has been stable for quite a long time now. Any issue is rare occasion at this point, but for it to be an issue that takes more than a few days to figure out is practically unheard of.

At the end of March, one of the first people to report the issue to us was actually someone in Quality Assurance at Adobe who was testing the extension in order to approve it to be on the Dreamweaver Exchange. He sent us great news; ASP & ColdFusion were approved, but the PHP version wouldn't install. Along with that he sent us the Extension Manager crash report XML file.

This was the first I'd seen one of their crash report files. Nothing in it looked out of sorts to me and I kept scrolling through the file hoping to find some clue so that I could reproduce the issue. The one tag that could have helped was empty: <reproSteps></reproSteps>

All of us here at Cartweaver tried to reproduce the issue, but none of us could. Over the next couple months we got similar reports from a few more customers. With each report, we tried to duplicate the issue on a system with the same configuration (for example Windows Vista with CS3, or XP with CS4) but it just wasn't duplicate for us. We of course suggested the customer try all the standard techniques for troubleshooting a Dreamweaver extension issue, but even uninstalling Dreamweaver and wiping out settings didn't do the trick.

Why was this happening to just a few customers? It drove me crazy; I had to find the answer. We probably could have just said sorry to the few people who had the problem and issued refunds, but that's not our style at Cartweaver; we'd rather do everything possible to make things better. I wasn't going to just give up; somehow I'd figure out what was causing the issue and fix it!

Long story (at my personal blog) made short, it came down to a single file with a bad file date that prevented the MXP from installing on some systems. It took a lot longer to figure out the problem than any of us would have liked, but this was really obscure. I can't tell you how relieved I was when I got the news that it worked for a couple of our customers who had been experiencing the issue; finally!

My thanks to our customers who volunteered to help us find a solution to the issue. Your patience and helpfulness are very appreciated; thank you so much!

Since you're probably reading this because you own Cartweaver 3 PHP, there's one important thing you should know: If you're using Cartweaver 3 PHP 3.1.13 and it is working fine for you, you don't need the 3.1.14 update. (No changes were made to PHP files, so if you have 3.1.13 working just fine you don't need this update.)

I started a series at Community MX about modifying and enhancing the Cartweaver admin using the configuration options and custom coding. The first article is about adding a low-stock warning to your admin home page.

Some other past Community MX articles about Cartweaver are:

Integrating Cartweaver with a Page Design

Showing Results and Details on One Page Using AJAX

Using JumpStarts with Cartweaver, Featuring Minneapolis

I get a lot of questions about making an Add to Cart button for Cartweaver. This is not something that is available out of the box, but easily implemented. Cartweaver doesn't work like Paypal, where you need static add to cart buttons to make the cart work. CW is self-contained and database driven, where all products are stored in the database. However, an add to cart button is easily added. I have been using them for years on my own site www.tom-muck.com/extensions. The following can be added to the ProductForm.php file in the Cartweaver admin, right before the closing </div> tag on the Page 1 div. Find this code:

 </div>
 <div id="page2">

add this:

<p><a href="AddToCartButtons.php?prodId=<?php echo($row_rsCWGetProduct["product_ID"]);?>" target="_blank">Make Add To Cart Buttons</a></p>
 </div>
 <div id="page2">

Now, create a new page in the /cw3/admin folder called AddToCartButtons.php and put this code on it:

<?php
include("application.php");
$productId = isset($_GET["prodId"]) ? intval($_GET["prodId"]): 0;

/* Get Product Data */
$query_rsCWGetProduct = sprintf("SELECT DISTINCT product_ID,
product_Name,
product_Description,
s.SKU_ID,
s.SKU_MerchSKUID
FROM tbl_products p
INNER JOIN tbl_skus s
ON p.product_ID = s.SKU_ProductID
WHERE product_ID = %d
AND product_Archive = 0
AND product_OnWeb = 1
", $productId);
$rsCWGetProduct = $cartweaver->db->executeQuery($query_rsCWGetProduct, "rsCWGetProduct");
$rsCWGetProduct_recordCount = $cartweaver->db->recordCount;
$row_rsCWGetProduct = $cartweaver->db->db_fetch_assoc($rsCWGetProduct);

do {
?>
<h2><?php echo($row_rsCWGetProduct["product_Name"] .": skuid " . $row_rsCWGetProduct["SKU_MerchSKUID"]);?></h2>
<textarea cols="80" rows="10">

<form action="details.php?prodId=<?php echo($row_rsCWGetProduct["product_ID"]);?>" method="post" name="AddToCart">
 <input name="qty" type="hidden" value="1">
  <input name="skuid" type="hidden" value="<?php echo($row_rsCWGetProduct["SKU_ID"]);?>">
  <input name="prodId" type="hidden" value="<?php echo($row_rsCWGetProduct["product_ID"]);?>">
  <input name="submit" type="submit" class="formButton" value="Add to Cart">
</form></textarea>
<br/><br/><hr/>
<?php
} while ($row_rsCWGetProduct = $cartweaver->db->db_fetch_assoc($rsCWGetProduct));

That should do it. Now, when you click the link, the page populates with add to cart button code for each sku for that product.

The add to cart button code looks like this:

<form action="details.php?prodId=31" method="post" name="AddToCart">
 <input name="qty" type="hidden" value="1">
  <input name="skuid" type="hidden" value="59">
  <input name="prodId" type="hidden" value="31">
  <input name="submit" type="submit" class="formButton" value="Add to Cart">
</form>