I'm currently working on my first e-commerce site and would like to offer my client the option of adding, maybe 3, related products for each product using the CMS I'm developing. I guess this would be much like Amazon et all.
I don't think getting the info into the db will be a problem, what I see as a problem is how an admin will select 3 out of 200+ products. Obviously a drop down is a bad idea, but so would a alphabetical list. has anyone got any insight into the best way to solve this.
Why is a drop-down a bad idea? My only concerns would be
a) bloated code (200 options at 20 chars each = 4000 chars (4k?)
b) a long list to scroll through for the user
c) combo boxes wouldn't allow the user to choose the order of the three related products -- you'd need 3 drop-down menu's for that :)
Perhaps it could be a series of drop-downs (CDs|Books|Videos or A-K|L-Z etc)
The other solutions I have depend on your target market -- for a CMS in a controlled environment and limited user group, you might be able to get away with the following ideas:
1. Using CSS2's overflow property to create a little scrollable area. Again, these could be broken into categories to make it easier for the user.
<div style='height:50px; overflow:auto'> <input type='checkbox' name='foo' value='1' />A product<br /> <input type='checkbox' name='foo' value='1' />A product<br /> <input type='checkbox' name='foo' value='1' />A product<br /> <input type='checkbox' name='foo' value='1' />A product<br /> ... <input type='checkbox' name='foo' value='1' />A product<br /> </div>
2. Javascript pop-up -- you could take this part of the process out of the main window, and into a JS pop-up window which let's the user dig through categories, do searches, WHATEVER to find each product. Then some JS code on the pop-up could talk back to the main window and 'fill in' 3 text-fields / hidden fields with the related product ID's / descriptions / etc.
You'd need to know a fair bit about JS, or get some serious help here, but IT CAN BE DONE.
Justin French
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