Looks like some nice additions.
Comments so far I still fell the cart checkout needs a little tidying for instance at the top while going through process, would it not be good to have a tick image for every process completed?

Some of the links during the process could be swap around on page a bit.

=======
I hope the 3rd party skins option works well, as skins etc can cost a bit, & also upgrade of skins to future versions can get exspensive so this feature is good.

Also good to see that x-cart are including standard features that would normally require a paid for add-on.

I see more & more software developers do a so called crafty add-on exrtra instead of a standard feature for future releases so good to see here.

Not had chance to test it yet, & most probably won't until bug reports etc are ironed out.

Well done x-cart

Shan

Excellent work with the feedback! Hopefully X-cart will take notice of the points you raise, and then you won't have to spend your days firefighting issues that come up time and time again.

I'm sure you have mods for all sorts of things which you'd like to share, but with your spare time taken up sorting out basic things that have been discussed ad nauseum on the board but still haven't been fixed by X-cart you probably just don't have the time.

BTW, as a fellow UK X-cart user, I'm glad to have you continually fighting for our corner for localisation issues. I stick my oar in from time to time, but they never notice me... but then, they never notice you either :) Keep at it though.

One point though... I like the save % star... make it optional maybe, but don't just wipe it out completely

Cheers

Dave

please add html catalog option by product, or subcategory too.

and Manufacturer please !

Multiple Option "Options"
 

What are the chances of getting checkboxes (with or without price changes), radio buttons AND drop down menus for product options ??? Once I have this my world will be ALMOST complete ...

One other tiny thing that would be **extremely** helpful is a way to enter phone or mail in orders....

Life would be GRAND :lol:

Problems with checkout:


I see the in the checkout

first name and last name is still repeated 3 times!


Either remover first name and last name from billing info or personal info info becuase by law this should be the same person, so it does not make sense.

Also going by other sites and the page will be less broken up looking if
under Billing info was
First name
last name
adress
...
phone
email


then we could eliminate personal information.


Also is there a shipping drop down on the shopping cart page anymore??
I think even though it is mentioned in a seperate checkout page( which is good ) it should still be part of the shopping cart page for the users who want to know the shipping costs quickly. Then what is selected on this page will be the default readio button that is selected on the "shipping and payment" checkout screen.


----------------------------------------------

Also on the "personal details" step in the checkout.


The authentication box on the top is confusing IMO.
This box should be off to the side and/or
it should be mroe clear that that this is for returning customers
look at the checkout of this site as an example
https://www.backcountry.com

As i feel how it is now it will confuse customers who do not have an account and even those who do have an account.

And why is there still a link for them to register. If they dont have an account then they should just ocmplete the nomal checkout process and choose to create an account.

It would be nice if
For those of us who dont want to use inventory tracking, we should still be able to set a product as "out of stock" .


For any one who uses drop shippers there is no need for inventory tracking cause but there is still a need to set a product as out of stock.

I think coupons should be addressed as well

i.e at the moment if you add something a 10% discount then it takes it from the ex VAT price (if you have VAT added)

Its not a problem if you are selling just in the UK as you enter your prices inc vat anyway but if you ship worldwide you have to enter your prices ex vat and then x-cart adds on the vat.

this causes the above and so when a customer thinks they are getting 10% off the price they aren't they are actually getting 10% off the ex vat price and the customer feels cheated.

My god that's huge! Sounds like too much of a good thing. I'd rather have a couple of more product images shown on the page to generate sales for a 50K page size hit. Yes it gets cached but what a way to greet a new potential customer - sorry its a little slow getting in the door but you'll like it when you get there? Ever see the tons of ads out there for "5 times faster than regular dial up"? Maybe your site only targets DSL users but I'd like mine to be a good experience for all users.


My home page is about 12K of HTML, the CSS is about 7K. So 19K would go to 60K+ wih your CSS. What's the shopper benefit of a 3 times larger page? Nothing - its a programmers thing. I would look at greatly simplifying your css and/or breaking it up so only what's needed on a page gets loaded there.

X-Cart please do work on getting xhtml compliant and all, but don't go overboard.

Just a few thoughts
 

Hi all,

Just thought IБ─≥d add my 2 cents

I just finished adding over 20 custom modБ─≥s to 4.0.16 gold, which I found on this forum and thought I was just about ready to launch the storeБ─╕and now you go and completely destroy my plans!!! Great job on implementing these new features.

When I originally began looking around for a shopping cart I nearly didnБ─≥t buy Xcart because I was put off by the little things I saw as flaws. From a technical stance Xcart is extremely powerful, but from a customers point of view there were some glaring visual, design problems. However, after browsing through these forums I discovered there was a wealth of custom modБ─≥s to overcome most of these problems, hence why I bought the script! What I donБ─≥t understand is why many of these are not already included in this latest program releases.

To list a few things that really bugged me include:

- Have Sub-categories with pictures and description
- Improve the search function that finds phrases in Б─°order anyБ─² (pun intended)
- Remove that blasted Б─°product codeБ─² from the product page (took me ages to find the problem and delete it!)
- Making the Site Title different from the business name (my business has a very long name and needs to be distinguished from the title of the store)
- Remove the use of CSS style and GIF picture combination for buttons (what purpose does this serve, why not just use GIF pics Б─⌠ there are only about 12 different buttons that need to be used and itБ─≥s a real pain to change the button templates to replace the Б─°link (Go)Б─² with just an image. I feel this is very important because it really cleans up the layout of the site, particularly on the Б─°shopping cartБ─² and Б─°wishlistБ─² page.
- Remove the Б─°DefaultБ─² sort option (itБ─≥s meaningless)
- Give customers to option to select how many search results to show
- Have related products with thumbnail and description
- Have thumbnail pictures in bestsellers box
- Option to enable Б─°Detailed infoБ─² in mini-cart box (ie. List of products added instead of just Б─°Items=#Б─²)
- The ability to set admin user permissions to limit/grant access to particular aspects of the control panel in the gold version! This is somewhat used in the pro version but still does not allow an administrator to grant/deny access to particular options. For example, I would like to enable my client to access, orders, users, coupons, gift certificates, and products and not give them access to the other system settings. The only way I found around this problem was to edit a few admin templates to remove the links to the parts I want to restrict. Of course IБ─≥m not actually restricting their access, IБ─≥m only removing the link. This is also a pain because it means I have to re-upload the original templates whenever I want to make system changes!

I can think of many many more but I don't want to bore you!

If, in the designing of xcart, you really cared about the customer experience you would never have put the Б─°WARNING: Antifraud module is not enabled.Б─² on the admin invoice! It is these Б─°littleБ─² things that can become big things to many people and as such they need to addressed seriously.

I am re-iterating some of what Б─°shanБ─² posted, but only because heБ─≥s not alone and maybe there needs to be more people re-iterating the problems so they donБ─≥t get forgotten and ignored!!

IБ─≥m sorry if IБ─≥m ranting but the time itБ─≥s taken to write this is nothing compared to the many hours IБ─≥ve spent moding my x-cart. Basically, it would be nice if xcart was one day released with all the ideas mentioned in these forums addressedБ─╕but then again if that happened any idiot could build a brilliant shop!?!

Oh, did I mention I love xcart!! I know itБ─≥s easy to sit back criticizing and picking out all its shortcomings, but thatБ─≥s really the only way things get improved! So IБ─≥ll just sit here and eagerly await future releases.

All the best

X-CART ROX!

and now gmt+2 14:01
The online demo store is being updated now. Please try again in a few minutes. Sorry for the inconvenience.

i guess there is a new fixed beta coming :)

Billing Address Fields not in Logical Order
 

I have noticed that when we key in the billing address details that you place the field "State" before the field "Country". This is not logical as I cannot select a state/county of "Lancashire" in the UK when the Country default is "USA" - so lets have the 2 fields the other way round please.

It was an SSL Certificate issue on our server. Fixed. Thank you.



Try to disable the redundant fields using the General settings/User profile options page, please.



This has not been changed in 4.1.0. Discounts are always applied to the net price, and after that taxes are applied. If a product price includes tax, then the net price is calculated and after that discounts and taxes are applied.

Case in point, I've converted 4.0.16 to a CSS W3C compliant code base, and the final CSS total is only 11kb to control everything on the site. Doing such I stripped around 30kb of HTML away from the .tpl's reducing download times from the standard out of box tpl code.

using websiteoptimization.com here's the results I've gotten, keep in mind im not splitting the CSS into segments as well as the original skin1.css is in place just for redudancy for official x-cart add-ons and modules to function properly. Also I use large thumbnails on my site anyone with smaller thumbnails or using mini_thumbs from the custom mods forum on listing pages will defiantly see a greater decrease in download times, since X-Cart is known to resize product thumbnails in HTML on listing pages which greatly bloats download times.

:arrow: http://www.cart-lab.com

Here is X-Cart 4.0.1 stats:

:arrow: http://www.x-cart.com/demo_preview/home.php

I would second the W3C valid CSS and HTML, as well as implementing the GD or ImageMagick library so that our download times are faster rather than resizing images with html just to bloat precious pages up ultimately anoyoing the beloved customer.

All these new bells and whistles are nice, but focus on Conversion Rates and download times more would be my 2cents on the 4.1.x beta. :wink:

I would agree with Boomer.

X-Cart should focus on effeciency. Faster load times, cart conversion, and easier administration.

GD Lib and html compliance are 2 bigges for sure.

Company in shipping and billing address
 

Due to many requests from our customers we have extended the addresses to include a company field in both, the shipping and the billing address. This is no big deal, but it should be included in the original X-Cart DB and source.

Also we have completely restructured the checkout process into logical groups. Entering the addresses is in a wizzard like design. There are several small windows, but no server interaction is required (layer technology).

You may want to take a look at our test site (orders are not processed of course). The URL is testshop.gmmch.com.

Thomas

X-Cart 4.0.15

Re: Company in shipping and billing address
 

I like the first step in your checkout process and i believe that this is what x-cart should do.

That is when you click checkout it goes to a screen and ask the user if they are a new customer or registered customer.

This seems to be the convention on many top sites such as amazon, barnesandnoble, and many many more.


I think how they have it now is very confusing to a customer by having some login at the top of the page. While this eliminates an extra page, this adds alot of confusion IMO. I believe this needs to be reworked, and it would be best to make it a seperate page.

I think it cant be stressed how important it is that these issues are addressed this time. Some fundamental problems have existed for far too long now.

I would rather a new version was not released untill things have been sorted.

xcart is good but has the potential to be fantastic.

Theres no reason it couldnt be the best out of the box without having to spend ages re writing code.

usability first, bells and whistles next :idea:

estimated release date
 

I know that developers usually do not want to mention an exact release date for the stable release for obvious reasons, but I had just purchased 4.0.16 and spent some time modifying it and will soon have someone make even more modifications to get the store ready for xmas season.

I would like to know, if possible, when would the estimated release date would be. At lease if it will be this year or in 2006.

There are some really neat fetures in 4.1.0 version that i would like to have and some stuff that I was thinking of having custom added is in it so, I dont want to pay for something that will be available very soon.

Even a very broad info like what the usual beta to stable release pattern has been in the past would help.


thanks all.

Re: Company in shipping and billing address
 

That's a nice checkout!! :)

Did you do the code for it?

Re: estimated release date
 

Considering it is still in beta it will be a while.

Even if 4.1 was released tomorrow i would not upgrade my site to it yet as by business relies on it so I would wait for a few dot releases. 4.1 has things that I have been waiting a long time for and I am really excited that they have been included in this version. It will probably work fine for most but I can't take that chance especially with as busy as it gets over the next two months. My 4.0 branch install works great and will take me through the holiday season.

Re: Company in shipping and billing address
 

Yes we did it in house. At first I was thinking about making a mod, but there are so many php and tpl files involved that it would be a hassle to distribute the mod for different X-Cart versions.

Thomas

X-Cart 4.0.15

I am sorry if this was answered in the 6 or so pages in this post but...

Where are the addons for 4.1.X? Configurator, Compare, RMA, etc...

I know this is still in beta, I was just making sure they didn't miss them in my files area.

We haven't released any addons yet, except X-FancyCategories.

Thanks to all of you for the feedback! Some of your suggessions will be included in the final release.

As has been mentioned several times on this forum, W3C compatibility does not mean compatibility with different browsers. As you know, not all the producers of web browsers strictly follow these standards in the development of their products (it is enough to have a look at the results of Acid2 test to find that out).

The main point of X-Cart software is a compatibility with different browsers. We will investigate the possibility to redesign the templates for compliance with W3C standards without losing compatibility with specific browsers. If, as a result of investigating this problem, a decision will be made to redesign the templates, the final release will have to be delayed for another two months.

Not everyone will agree (because of a possible delayin release) but I think thats great news. Its all about making the standard product live up to its true potential. I love using xcart and the community that we have its just frustrating when there are simple things lacking. Its not like the talent isnt there to fix things, they just seem to have been overlooked.

use this oportunity to make the templates and workflow as near perfect as you can and reap the benefits in the long term

The focus should be on making xcart as compatible / cleanly coded / intuitive / simple for shoppers to use as possible

I'm having the same problem. After clicking import I am redirected to a page with a message that says it's checking the csv file and nothing else happens, it just hangs. Not even an error message. So I exported the sample product list, downloaded it then tried to import and got the same results. Nothing happens at all.

Well said, spot on!

I've personally spent ages cleaning up code, rewriting CSS, stripping nested tables etc etc - if it was done 'out of the box' it would save me so much time - I'd be prepared to wait 6 additional months for a 'clean' version.

Saying that, I'm sure there's many out there who would benefit from the new features now - perhaps something for 4.2 ? :)

I can live with that! This would be a great addition. After Wholesale improvements, this would be the next biggest change for 4.1. Here is what I see as the biggest enhancements in 4.1:

1. Wholesale prices for product variants. :!:
2. Template overhaul including full W3C compliance. (if it makes the cut) :!:
3. Fast Lane Checkout.
4. Admin/multi-customer simultaneous login.
5. Blowfish encryption.

Two months is nothing :)

Now is the time and modernizing the code is very important. If you don't do it now it would have to wait for 4.2 and that is way too far away. You have tons of beta testers here to help you out and I bet Boomer and Shan wouldn't mind a little contract work if you need to outsource to speed up the work ;)

I would love to see full css based layout but I am a dreamer so at least cleaning up the code would be great!!!

is there an admin demo for 4.1 yet?

Optimized for SPEED
 

Re: Optimized for SPEED
 

I would say that "most" is incorrect for 56k dial-up.

In the US I believe it is closer to 50%

Re: Optimized for SPEED
 

[quote="Light Speed
I would say that "most" is incorrect for 56k dial-up.

In the US I believe it is closer to 50%[/quote]

In a previous life I managed the technical side of a $100 million+ web site with a fairly affluent, baby boomer to somewhat older customer base. We had to make an effort with some of the older customers to get them to use the web. We occasionally used a service to test our customer internet connection speed. The last measurement I saw 1 to 2 years ago was about 60% dialup. So 50%, perhaps a little less sounds about right now for that business. I suspect certain product lines, demographics and B to B sites have a higher broadband penetration.

Re: Optimized for SPEED
 

Yes, dial-up customers must be considered. We recently added a low-bandwidth cookie to x-cart to allow customers to get a light-weight view of some normally intensive pages to accommodate users with slower internet access.

There may still be some issues with a full CSS layout with older browsers - I would love a full CSS layout personally, and we use CSS layouts with semantic markup whenever we can - but i think it could cause issues for some developers with an target audience with partial/bad CSS support - some users are unable to upgrade even if they want to.

I personally think it's time to forget Netscape 4.x (or Nutscrape as it used to be known around here ;) and maybe IE 4 as well (generally we get a lot more Netscape 3 visitors than IE 4 on most of our sites).

Dumping font tags and replacing those nested 'border' tables with css borders would be a great start - getting rid of the image buttons (normal form buttons are fine, and look pretty good in winXP & OS X anyway) also putting all JS in external files would be another improvement i can think off the top of my head.

I don't mean to sound too critical - x-cart is a great piece of software, and I'm sure everyone appreciates all the hard work that's gone into 4.1 already, it's just that clean code is the one big thing that would make my life a little easier!

http://www.x-cart.com/demo_preview/admin/

Another future idea for xcart is to include AJAX functionality, especially on the ADMIN SIDE!

No need to have 20 page refreshes when trying to add a product. Many great php programs are taking full use of AJAX, like VBulletin.

How great would it be too add product info, hit submit and then not have to wait for the page to reload before you begin to add an image to that product or some other detailed info.

Another note on coupons - would be nice to have the option to have them apply to the ORDER TOTAL or the SUBTOTAL - right now it's just subtotal - so if I have a $20 coupon code, and purchase $10 of stuff, I still have to pay shipping and tax whereas the whole order should have been free!

Re: Optimized for SPEED
 

You probably live in or near a big city where everyone uses cable modems so you think everyone has one, regardless of whos who, what research you've done or who you've worked for doesn't matter or have any credibility to the fact that alot of people do not live in or near big cities and still use 56k dial up connections. X-cart is very powerful but desperatley needs to be optimized for SPEED if you want to operate a truly global presense accessable to everyone everywhere !!! We've had more reliability and less abandoned oders using basic paypal buttons.