adding items to the cart via flash? anyone tried?
 

Hi Guys and Gals,

I want to add xcart to an existing flash site.

All I want the flash to do is add the items to the cart, then when someone wants to checkout they will go through a cuistomised xcart checkout.

Has anyone tried this?

Cheers

Spence

Flash is not recommended, as Search Engines can't read it, and people tend to disable it. But if you insist, you can probably use the html links for the add-to cart functionality. Problem is, if they go back and forth between the flash and X-Cart, they stand a good chance of losing their cart and/or login sessions.

Good Point about the timing out etc Padraic.

I have never been a fan of flash but many of my clients are demanding it now. It really is hard to ignore it's advantages presentation wise over html/php/asp, it's technology we are going to have to embrace or be left behind. Also Google can read flash now.

Spence

Oh don't get me wrong, I agree that it can be a great presentation tool...but in moderation and in key areas. Good uses of Flash in an E-commerce site:

- Header graphic
- Intro page graphic
- Detailed view of a product/item

Google can read Flash to a certain extent, yes. But if you put a Flash site up against a standard html/css site with the same content, the html site will out-rank the Flash site every time hands down.

yeah I agree, I'll alos always go for the html version of a site if given the choice because I just dont care about the animation etc, I got better things to do than wait for stuff to load!

do you know how to find out what the html links are that are being sent to the cart? I imagine it would be the product id, then quantity or something? all I see is an extra 'add' in the browser.

Exactly :)

As for the html links, you can generate them in X-Cart. Go to the 'modify products' screen, and search for something. On the results page, you will see a 'Generate HTML Links' option for a checked item. Test it out, you'll see the options given to you on the next screen.

Just learned about this myself the other day, looks like a nice little feature :)

awesome! thanks mate!

There ya go..... just do that....generate the html code. With that you can then load it into flash. Not sure how well the session is going to remain though as I haven't tested this yet myself.

Thanks for the referral to the HTML Links tool. I'm doing a similar project but in HTML not Flash. Can anyone tell me how I could modify the form that is generated to allow more than one item to be added into the cart with a single button?