Industry guru Dave Taylor offers free tech support on a wide variety of technical and business topics, including HTML, Apple iPhone, online advertising, Cascading Style Sheets, Web design, management, Unix, Linux, search engine optimization, online dating, Mac OS X, shell script programming and Microsoft Windows.

Shopping carts and JavaScript

A reader writes:

Can one develop a web site for e-commerce that utilizes a shopping cart function and credit card processing without the use of JavaScript? Perhaps this question is addressed later in portions of the book I haven't gotten to yet.

Dave's Answer: Thanks for your query! I know that theoretically, at least, you can build an entire ecommerce system without any JavaScript at all: I know because I wrote one years ago that had just that characteristic. However, in terms of the popular ecommerce packages, it might well be a different story, because JavaScript does make direct interactivity quite convenient.

What I'd recommend is that you explore some of the more popular ecommerce/shopping cart solutions and talk with those vendors about your concerns about JavaScript and whether they have a JavaScript-free solution. Start with 1 Shopping Cart (whom I've heard many good things about) and then explore the Paypal Shopping Cart solution.

And, please, do report back what you find out!

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Comments

I think this is worth mentioning... You should also try SmartCart. http://www.smartcart.com It is a complete ecommerce shopping cart builder. It has all the features you would need built right in. You can setup a free trial right now.

Posted by: PJ Estrella at October 28, 2005 9:02 PM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!