Welcome Resume References Education Course Work Contact

Human Computer Interface Design

Online Bookstore Project
Group: Christopher Huyler, Christopher Fouracre, Mike VanVliet.
Goal:
  • To create an easy to use on-line bookstore for Ithaca College students.
  • To reduce/eliminate frustration and confusion that is present with Ithaca’s system.
  • To make the experience of buying books for courses less taxing on everyone involved.
Acomplishments:
  • Flexibility: Allowing students to have a number of choices when both selecting books and purchasing them.
  • Ease of Navigation: Allowing users to easily move both back and forward though out the process of purchasing their books. Navigation buttons are easily located and understood.
  • Confusion Management: Help Buttons are located on each page.
  • Use of Color: We tried to match the theme that Ithaca College used while keeping it easy and enjoyable to read.

Implementation
Since the course focused on the interface more than the underlying programming involved, only a WYSIWYG project was required with some minimal functionality. We chose to use HTML with JavaScript to write most of the project with CGI written in C for the backend.

The user's shoppingcart is stored using a cookie to further simplify the implementation. Four text files are used to keep track of all other data. One file holds student information including their courses for each semester, another file holds information about each course, another for each book, and a final text file is used to keep track of orders placed.

Three CGI scripts control the back end of the program. A login script is used to initialize the cookie with the user's name and id number found in the student text file. A search script is used to parse the book file and a purchase script is used to place the order in the orders text file. All data entry checking is done with JavaScript before any forms are submitted.

Due to time constraints, we did not make the project cross browser compatable. We had problems with the school's version of Netscape Navigator so this project was only tested under Internet Explorer for the PC.

Project Files
Working Demo: Use the name John Smith to log in with the id 100000000 and password 1234.
Text files: You may want to look at these files to see what books are available before running the demo. Try searching for them using different methods. Check the log before and after to see if your order has been placed.
Script files:
Instructions: The school's current bookstore is here. Our bookstore starts out with a revamped version of their opening page with links placed logically. To order books you must continue to the "Purchase Books" link under Text Books. Click on the sidebar links to see how we have designed the bookstore around Ithaca's current website.

Sorry, the demo is currently unavailable. I am having issues with my ISP allowing me to run precompiled scripts.

back
top of page
next 
Welcome :: Resume :: References :: Education :: Course Work :: Contact
chuyler1@ic3.ithaca.edu Last Revision: