Progress Towards 1.5.0

Here's the other part of the equation opencart does not have anything in the core that won't work with ie6, so ie6 compatibility is strictly a theme issue. If someone is not satisfied with not having ie6 fully supported they can get someone to write them an ie6 compliant theme, and I'm sure there will be people doing that. I imagine it will be just like it is now on the theme front some support it and some don't.

As far as it being unprofessional telling people they should update their browser. It's becoming more and more common. You realize that you cannot use hotmail (a Microsoft website) using ie6? Same with gmail basically all the big players are completely dropping support for ie6. I guess you could say they are the big names so they can afford to loose the sales/visits where a smaller company cannot, but I don't think it being unprofessional is quite true anymore.

oh an about zencart supporting ie6 that's because it's theme was written back when ie6 was the new hotness.

Xsecrets wrote:oh an about zencart supporting ie6 that's because it's theme was written back when ie6 was the new hotness.

They coded that theme back in 1974?

Ya.. now that XP is no longer supported or shipped on PC's, people will start getting win vista and win 7 pcs with IE8+

CUSTOM_UK wrote:The problem with the current OC 1.49 is that customers have to go through the farce of entering all their details just to see the shipping charges. That is the reason I won't deploy on my live sites as that concept belongs on some distant planet. At least Zen Cart has a built in shipping estimator, built in PayPal Express and works with IE6.

I do have a Shipping Estimate module available here, if that's your main concern.

Johnathan wrote:

CUSTOM_UK wrote:The problem with the current OC 1.49 is that customers have to go through the farce of entering all their details just to see the shipping charges. That is the reason I won't deploy on my live sites as that concept belongs on some distant planet. At least Zen Cart has a built in shipping estimator, built in PayPal Express and works with IE6.

I do have a Shipping Estimate module available here, if that's your main concern.

I'm going to build one from scratch that forces people to use before they can checkout.

Daniel wrote:

Johnathan wrote:

CUSTOM_UK wrote:The problem with the current OC 1.49 is that customers have to go through the farce of entering all their details just to see the shipping charges. That is the reason I won't deploy on my live sites as that concept belongs on some distant planet. At least Zen Cart has a built in shipping estimator, built in PayPal Express and works with IE6.

I do have a Shipping Estimate module available here, if that's your main concern.

I'm going to build one from scratch that forces people to use before they can checkout.

LOL, as long as you build it for Custom_UK's edition of OC only....

Seriously though, a built in optional shipping estimator would be nice, although it might upset Johnathan a little bit.

its the only way of doing things. the EU says you need to show the total cost of people have to pay before they enter any personal information.

HTMLCSSNoob wrote:

Daniel wrote: I'm going to build one from scratch that forces people to use before they can checkout.

LOL, as long as you build it for Custom_UK's edition of OC only....

Seriously though, a built in optional shipping estimator would be nice, although it might upset Johnathan a little bit.

I'm not upset, it's been on the slated features release for a while. And as a user of OpenCart, I understand wanting as much utility out of the (free) core as possible. Mine will still work for all users of previous versions between 1.3.3 and 1.4.9.

Daniel wrote:its the only way of doing things. the EU says you need to show the total cost of people have to pay before they enter any personal information.

hope they were smart enough to define personal information so that it doesn't include address or at least postal code or whatever they are called in EU countries.

HTMLCSSNoob wrote:LOL, as long as you build it for Custom_UK's edition of OC only....

Seriously though, a built in optional shipping estimator would be nice, although it might upset Johnathan a little bit.

Only a developer would have come up with the idea where customers have to enter all of their details JUST to see what the shipping was in the first place.

I guess it all depends how serious you are about doing business on the net. At least Daniel has the good sense to realise the core program needs more features to propel OC into more mainstream use. The easier the checkout process, the easier it is for the customers too.

Whilst commercial addons are available for OC, it doesn't take much before you have an open source based product that can end up costing more than some of the commercial solutions out there.

Whilst commercial addons are available for OC, it doesn't take much before you have an open source based product that can end up costing more than some of the commercial solutions out there

Of course, most people will evaluate existing products on the market, what features they contains, which will require additional payment, etc, etc and choose the best*

*As I did, and it turns out OpenCart won. Especially after I spent after 4 months poking Magento, which is incredibly bloated and complex, even for a dev.

I would prefer that development for 1.5 wasn't delayed due to supporting ie6.
My store still gets traffic from ie6, but still, work at making it work in ff 3.6+, Chrome 6+, Opera 10+, IE 8+ and let us worry about ie6. Not everyone deals with businesses that still use ie6, and shouldn't have to wait. I give it a week before there is a ie6 theme for those who want it.

ncc50446@hotmail.com wrote:I would prefer that development for 1.5 wasn't delayed due to supporting ie6.
My store still gets traffic from ie6, but still, work at making it work in ff 3.6+, Chrome 6+, Opera 10+, IE 8+ and let us worry about ie6. Not everyone deals with businesses that still use ie6, and shouldn't have to wait. I give it a week before there is a ie6 theme for those who want it.

well it's not like 1.5.0 is right around the corner or anything anyways. It will still be a while.

When Microsoft rushed Vista out of the door it caused immense problems. They took a bit more time with Windows 7 and released a relatively stable product that was much improved.

I hope that Daniel takes his time with getting 1.5 right before he releases it onto the market (minor bugs excepted). At the moment OpenCart is just one of a selection of open source solutions out there, each with its own devout group of followers. Rather than debate the pros and cons of one solution over another, a radically improved OpenCart with streamlined checkout, built in shipping estimator, PayPal Express and Google Checkout as part of the core program, is what is really needed to put it ahead of the other open source solutions. Someone also needs to find the time to create some constructive documentation for the new version too, as many elements are done on guesswork at the moment.

Version 1.5 needs to be a quantum leap forward with the development of OpenCart and that isn't going to happen in any immediate timespan.

From a development and customisation perspective, I think a heck of a lot of work needs to go into code commenting and syntax. At the moment it's often very difficult to determine what things are and what they do.

CUSTOM_UK wrote:........ a radically improved OpenCart with streamlined checkout, ........ PayPal Express and Google Checkout as part of the core program, is what is really needed..........

As long as it's easy to take out PayPal
The first thing I always do is throw out Paypal.
Not everyone is into PayPal. Some of us won't touch it.

Xsecrets wrote: well it's not like 1.5.0 is right around the corner or anything anyways. It will still be a while.

Which is why it doesn't need to be delayed even more with something trivial with ie6.
I'm not saying to rush 1.5.0. EA Games rushes every game they put out, and end up releasing a bunch of patches. Very annoying. Just as long as doesn't pull a Blizzard lol
Just saying, that he shouldn't have to worry about the headaches of it, when there are other headaches to worry about lol

CUSTOM_UK wrote:

HTMLCSSNoob wrote:LOL, as long as you build it for Custom_UK's edition of OC only....

Seriously though, a built in optional shipping estimator would be nice, although it might upset Johnathan a little bit.

Only a developer would have come up with the idea where customers have to enter all of their details JUST to see what the shipping was in the first place.

I guess it all depends how serious you are about doing business on the net. At least Daniel has the good sense to realise the core program needs more features to propel OC into more mainstream use. The easier the checkout process, the easier it is for the customers too.

Oh, I'm not saying that i'm not for a shipping estimator. Actually I would like one very much. But it was Daniel's comment that he was going to "force" it to be used by the customer before checkout that got me anxious. Personally I don't like to "force" my customers to do anything. If they want to use a shipping estimator then have at it. If they don't then oh well. That's why I said an optional one would be welcomed.

But now Daniel has mentioned that the EU requires the costs to be displayed before personal information is entered, so I understand why it has to be forced on the customer now.

CUSTOM_UK wrote:Whilst commercial addons are available for OC, it doesn't take much before you have an open source based product that can end up costing more than some of the commercial solutions out there.

You're right about that. I think i've spent about $100 now on addons and themes, and there are still several more things I would like to purchase. Not sure if I should wait until 1.5 comes out or if I should just go ahead and bite the bullet and get them now. LOL, i'm impatient....

CUSTOM_UK wrote:Rather than debate the pros and cons of one solution over another, a radically improved OpenCart with streamlined checkout, built in shipping estimator, PayPal Express and Google Checkout as part of the core program, is what is really needed to put it ahead of the other open source solutions.

Streamlined checkout yes, built in shipping estimator yes, Paypal Express and Google checkout I personally could live without as I use neither one of them. But I know i'm in the minority there, so I just gotta live with all the wonderful things that are done for PayPal while some of the other payment MODs go unnoticed...

Thanks for all the hard work Daniel and team... I enjoy Opencart very much and my customers seem to like it too.

One thing though that I REALLY want to see... is ONE PATH and ONE URL for each product. Currently each product page has five or six different URL's depending on how you find it and this has a very negative effect on search engine page rankings. 1.5.0 could be the most awesome cart in the world, but if the pages don't show up in a Google search, it's not very helpful.

Just my two cents... keep up the great work!

PS... I'm glad to read about the shipping calculator being built in.... I hope it's similar to Interspire's where it's built right into the shopping cart as a link that uses ajax to present the choices.

PSSS... I'm also crossing my fingers we get ajax search built in... I have it working now in one of my sites and I love it. Check it out at http://www.inspirationpeakgifts.com

RonA wrote:Thanks for all the hard work Daniel and team... I enjoy Opencart very much and my customers seem to like it too.

One thing though that I REALLY want to see... is ONE PATH and ONE URL for each product. Currently each product page has five or six different URL's depending on how you find it and this has a very negative effect on search engine page rankings. 1.5.0 could be the most awesome cart in the world, but if the pages don't show up in a Google search, it's not very helpful.

Just my two cents... keep up the great work!

PS... I'm glad to read about the shipping calculator being built in.... I hope it's similar to Interspire's where it's built right into the shopping cart as a link that uses ajax to present the choices.

PSSS... I'm also crossing my fingers we get ajax search built in... I have it working now in one of my sites and I love it. Check it out at http://www.inspirationpeakgifts.com

do you mean SEO Friendly URL's? if yes, then its already supported. if not, please elaborate