I ***** a lot about the many issues this cart has, and how some things just don’t work.
But compared to the other shopping cart solutions available out there, this cart is so very wonderful.
The product options and inventory combination’s are unmatched with other carts. And although you can’t set a sale item directly within a product, the promotions section is very verbose and highly functional. The block system, while buggy at times with blocks randomly disappearing, is the most versatile dynamic system I’ve seen for adjusting page layout. I’ve looked all over for a similar jQuery implementation of a block system that I can use on my own sites I develop. Couldn’t find one, but for sure I’ll be implementing a similar system for my projects. The one page checkout, although the checkout/order creation sucks (failing on any error), is really nice how it loads the different sections. And the overall code, while not object oriented, is still MVC an well laid out.
This cart, while not ‘there’ yet, has a much shorter distance to go than the many other carts out there.
Once 2.1 comes out, the orders won’t be created unless payment actually goes through, and order errors will be shown on checkout rather than a failed order page.
Then all it would need is some better documentation, like for all the back-end functions (those begining with fn_) and the ajax system, and some reassurance that those functions won’t randomly change how they work so I can develop with them with peace of mind.
After that I can’t see any major flaws and everything added afterwards is just small bug fixes and icing on the cake.
So, thanks CS-Cart 
female dogs are not foul!
If blocks randomly disappear, check your code, it is possible some descriptions might have a broken HTML that is killing the blocks.
I think it is silly to expect functions not to change. With bugs fixed and new code added, surely the implementation will change, functions too.
About better documentation, I agree. It takes too long to browse the code that has no comments.
The categories block sometimes disappears after adjusting/moving blocks on the blocks page. Save, and boom, no more categories block. I just go in and re-add the line to the blocks/locations/whatever folder. It should really find a way to implement them entirely in the db without anything on the hdd. Maybe put them in a sql file that’s imported when a skin is selected.
If you have a function, say fn_get_order_details for ex, if they changed the order or quantity of paramaters without any specific notification, it holds the potential to break many 3rd party plugins and custom implementations. They can change the inner workings of the function, but all functions should have a specific well defined actions that do not change. If they need more, they can build another function on top of it, or add stuff without breaking its original specs.
[quote name=‘phazei’]Once 2.1 comes out, the orders won’t be created unless payment actually goes through[/QUOTE]
Didn’t know about this, thanks, critical issue, can’t have order numbers created unless payment is confirmed (or unless check/money order is selected)
[quote name=‘phazei’] and order errors will be shown on checkout rather than a failed order page. [/QUOTE]
Another important feature
You can find the improvements in the order placement process at:
[url]http://forum.cs-cart.com/showthread.php?t=16180[/url]
You can also find the new checkout improvements at :
[url]http://forum.cs-cart.com/showthread.php?t=16846[/url]
You can review the order placement improvements at the labs site (labs.cs-cart.com). Use your forum credentials to authenticate and then log in to the admin area using admin/admin.
Bob