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OrderBar Versatility

Table of Contents

Part I How to (introduction)

Part II OrderBar Description

Versatility

Parameters

NoOfItems

Quantity[n]

unitPrice

units

description

ProductCodeNumber

showDropMenu

showTextField

showButton

setDefaultTextFieldValue

Weight

colorize

Applet Tag Attributes

Part III Checkout Pages

What they can do

Configurations

Handling Multiple Shipping Options

Coupon Processing

Setting up the Sales Tax Option

Linking to More than one Checkout Page

Linking

Part IV Web Page Template Generator Examples

FrontPage

Dreamweaver

OrderBar Versatility

Java is very very cool. It actually becomes part of the browser so you can carry information from web page to web page. That means you can have an OrderBar applet on one web page on one site and a second OrderBar applet on another page on a completely different site and it will collect purchasing information from both. There are no limits to where you can place the OrderBar applet in web space.

Typically, then, you'll want to manage specific information for each product. Each product or service is going to have a different name, description, shipping weight, price, etc. All of these can be added as parameters to each product listing.

In the introduction we described four parameters:

<param name = "description" value = "Product Description">
<param name = "ProductCodeNumber" value = "ABC123">
<param name = "unitPrice" value = "1.39">
<param name = "showButton" value = "on">

These describe the Product Code, price, description and the showButton parameter tells the OrderBar to display the button selection icon.

The OrderBar can display multiple selection icons. These are a button, a drop down menu, a textfield, or a combination:

And you can also combine the drop menu with the text field to allow your customers to enter their own quantity if none of the drop down quantities suit them.

That way when your customer clicks 'other' the textfield is shown, , so they can enter their own quantity.

You might also notice, after reading about the parameter settings, that the values themselves can be set in the drop down list, along with the number of listings you want in the drop down list. You can list 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the drop down list or you can list 1, 2, 4, 8 in the drop down list for example. it doesn't matter. You list one quantity to select from or you can list a hundred, although research shows more than six selections in a drop down list is inappropriate as it starts to bore people.

You can also preprogram your textfield quantity to show a default value:

Parameter Description list

The complete parameter list for the OrderBar applet looks like this:

You can use any or all of the parameters, although several are fundamental such as price and selecting an icon for display.

It would be a good idea to view the demo before studying the parameter list. We've prepared a concise example of the orderBar that will give you an overview and maybe give you some ideas on how to apply it to your application.

The quickest way to use this code is to 'copy and paste' it to your web page. Your primary concern is the 'value' of the param tags. You can copy and paste this code just like it is, put it in your web page but you'll want to change the price, description and probably product code to match the product or service you're representing on your web page.

NoOfItems - is the first parameter listed and it's for the number of entries that will be displayed in the drop down menu icon.

Quantity[n] - This is the quantity that will be shown in the drop down menu icon. The [n] value is a count from 1 to n where n is the NoOfItems value from the previous parameter.

For example in the above applet code we've used

<param name = "NoOfItems" value = "3">.

Thus we need 3 Quantity entries: Quantity1, Quantity2, Quantity3. In our example they're:

Notice how the param name changes for each tag and the word Quantity is appended with the numbers 1, 2, and 3. If we had made our NoOfItems param = "2" then we would only have two Quantity parameters: Quantity1 and Quantity2. If we had made our NoOfItems parameter equal twelve we would need 12 Quantity parameter tags: Quantity1, Quantity2 .... Quantity12.

The value of the quantity can be whatever we need. A complete Quantity parameter that looks like: <param name = "Quantity5" value = "10"> would multiply the unitPrice by ten when selected from the drop down menu icon.

unitPrice - is the price of the product. This is the price that will be multiplied by the quantity selected. You can use whole numbers or decimal values, like: 1, 1.95, 759.59, 5, .39 etc. Numbers and decimals only. No $ or ¢ symbols.

units - is the quantity value shown on the checkout page with the tally. Typically values are ea, lb, and doz.

description - is the product description listed in the tally section on the checkout page. Just like a receipt tape from the grocery store, you need some sort of descriptive reminder for the customer, on their receipt tally.

ProductCodeNumber - the product code is also listed on the tally page next to the description.

The orderBar applet has three icons that can be displayed on the web page for quantity selection: the 'Add' button, drop down menu or textfield.

showDropMenu - value = "on" will show drop down menu for quantity selection icon. showButton value must equal "off" if showDropMenu value = "on".

showTextField - value = "on" will show textField. It's also used with the 'showDropMenu' selection 'on' for 'other' quantity selection amounts in case you want to allow your customer to enter a custom amount. In other words both the drop down icon and the textfield icon are displayed with the textfield icon being displayed when the customer clicks on the 'other' selection from the drop down menu (see demo).

showButton - value = "on" will show 'Add' button for quantity selection icon. showDropMenu must be 'off' if showButton value = "on".

Icon Display Options
if <param showDropMenu =	on	on	off	off
if <param showTextField =	off	on	on	off
if <param showButton =	off	off	off	on
then	Show drop menu only	Show drop menu with textfield	Show textfield only	Show add button only

setDefaultTextFieldValue - sets the default quantity you'd like to appear in the textfield quantity selection icon. Quantity is cleared when textfield obtains focus (somebody clicks on it) and quantity is selected when focus is gained and lost or when focus is gained and return is entered.

Weight - is for shipping weight of product. Value here is multiplied by quantity selected and requires customized access. The tally sheet comes with straight shipping rates, that is the dollar value is multiplied by a percentage (a common method for setting shipping rates), but it doesn't utilize the shipping rate parameter. We can customize your tally sheet to do just about anything. Shipping rates can be indexed to zip codes, matched to different carriers, and local zip codes set aside for 'will call' orders or more, all adjusted shipping weights if needed.

colorize - Sets applet background color. This orderBar applet has the capability of displaying the quantity textField icon if the background of the applet is double clicked. The icons are not affected by the colorize parameter, only the background shows the color. If the applet width and height are set to 38 and 22, for example, the background won't show. Only the icon will be visible. If the width of the applet is set to 50 the background color will show on the right of the icon, for example.

Applet tag Attrbutes

The applet definition tag uses several attributes that you'll want to work with. It's the first tag in our list above:

The code = attribute is the name of the applet program stored in the same file folder or directory with the web pages.

width and height determine how much of the icon and applet background will show. The icons themselves are 40 pixels wide by 22 pixels high. If you make the width and height dimensions any larger the background will show with it's color determined by the 'colorize' parameter. The value is that the background can be double clicked to bring up the textField icon for selection. There are limited applications where this may come in handy, like order adjustments.

Since we broached the subject, adjustments, are an important consideration for a shopping cart, or should I say avoided. If you look around, you'll notice that a lot of shopping carts work very hard to cover this topic over with hype. Self correcting adjustments on the checkout page requires awkward or expensive server side programming, usually with a database, that can be avoided with orderBar checkout page. Here we've opted for the most fundamental and cost effective method. If a customer makes a correction in the a text field on the checkout page, it will be emailed with that correction. But this requires the merchant to verify order totals before shipping - a common practice performed anyway. We can provide server side auto adjustments for the orderBar but they are expensive and not recommended until order volumes mandate it.

Using the alt attribute is optional but considered a 'must' for correct web page design. If a browser can't interpret the icon graphics it will display the text in its place. A common usage is for the 'site impaired' browsers that verbalize the text. The text with the alt attribute will be read aloud.

Finally the 'align' attribute is optional but provides positioning of the orderBar icon next to an image or text. Options are absmiddle, absbottom, bottom, center, left, middle, right, top.

These are the key attributes for setting up a complete online store. The easiest and most cost effective way to set up this applet is in the same directory (or file folder as it's called on Windows) with the web pages it's used on. If you need to carry the information across directories please feel free to contact for additional information.

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