SOLO currently offers two separate shopping carts, the legacy ASP cart and the next generation .NET cart. Both of these carts share the same back end order processing. On the front end, however, the .NET cart lacks several features of the ASP cart that have yet to be ported over, while the ASP cart lacks several of the new features of the .NET cart (which will NOT be ported back to the ASP cart). In the future, all of the functionality of the ASP cart will eventually be ported to the .NET cart, while additional enhancements to the ASP cart are not likely. If you do not require any of the functionality not yet ported to the .NET cart, it is suggested that you choose the .NET cart rather than the ASP cart. By default, all new author accounts are set to use the .NET shopping cart.
Only an administrator with Master User permissions can set up the author account to use the .NET shopping cart. To enable the .NET shopping cart, simply edit the Cart Options and check the "Use .NET Cart" checkbox. Instant SOLO authors can request enabling of the .NET cart by sending an email to support@softwarekey.com with the request.
Major Features Not Yet Implemented in the .NET Cart
The following features are not yet implemented or have limited support in the .NET cart. If you rely on any of these features, you should use the legacy ASP cart until they have been ported over to the .NET cart:
No support for Exit Marketing.
No support for the following Cart Options:
Post Back URL
PreRegister Customers
Disable P/M Options on Payment Plan
Exit Handler Script
New Features of the .NET Cart
Improved look and feel - The look and feel of the .NET cart is greatly improved over the ASP cart.
Screen reader accessibility - The markup of the .NET cart is fully accessible to screen readers.
Improved input validation - The client and server side validation of the .NET cart is much more user friendly.
More flexible interface - The .NET cart offers far more flexibility when linking in from an external site. The new interface allows multiple actions to be completed in a single call to the shopping cart page.
Category support - The author catalog page supports filtering by category.
Dynamic menu support - Additional search and replace parameters are available in the storefront markup which support creating dynamically generated menus by product and category.
Meta tag support - Additional search and replace parameters are available in the storefront markup to support inserting the meta tag settings from categories or products into the markup on the catalog and product details pages.
Multi-language support - The cart can be displayed in English, French, German, Italian,or Spanish.
Currency Prefix/Postfix support - Currency values can be prefixed/postfixed with user defined values.
Distributor Mode - A new Distributor Mode is supported by the .NET cart, allowing a distributor user to log in to the cart using their distributor UserID/Password.
Support for the following Cart Options:
Country Match Mode - Controls whether the country fields for the shipping and billing address are editable.
Display Distributor Login - Controls whether a Distributor/Reseller login option will be displayed on the login page to allow Distributors/Resellers to log into the cart using their distributor login information.
Allow Customer PO - Controls whether a customer is allowed to enter a PO number on the payment page.
Require Source - Controls whether the free text source field is required on the registration page.
Currency Prefix/Postfix - Optional prefix/postfix to apply to currency values.