Tue Sep 26 02:22:18 2000 We're pleased to announce that the Akopia Interchange 4.5.6 beta release is ready and available for download now. We encourage all current Interchange, Minivend, and Tallyman users to download and evaluate this latest release, and contribute their feedback, bug reports, and general feelings about it as soon as they can. The major new additions are in the administrative user interface, and the majority of the back-end functionality remains relatively unchanged from Minivend 4. Therefore, existing Minivend users should be able to upgrade to the beta without fear, since the most likely place that "beta" quirks will appear is in the administration. A fairly complete list of changes appears at the end of this message. We strongly encourage anyone using Interchange to subscribe to the interchange-users mailing list and there post your feedback and bug reports. List information is at: http://lists.akopia.com/mailman/listinfo/interchange-users Download links for the standard tar.gz distribution as well as the RPM package are at: http://developer.akopia.com/cgi-bin/ic/download.html Please note that the RPM version must be invoked and restarted differently than the normal version. See README.rpm for details. See http://developer.akopia.com/ for a live demo, the latest news, and online documentation users can contribute to. We look forward to your comments! The Akopia Team ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Interchange-4.5.6 changes -- complete overhaul of UI * Everything renamed to "interchange". interchange.cfg, interchange.pid, etc. If you keep minivend.cfg as the configuration file, the PID file will be minivend.pid. There should be a good level of backward compatibility. * "construct" is now the default demo -- a "foundation" demo will be added later. -- Improved graphics and layout over older demos. -- Split ship addresses for items -- Shipping notices integrated -- Recurring order facility (doesn't yet work). -- PO with credit limit -- Merchandising cross-sells by category or item. -- "Others who bought this" The HTML rendering is kind of slow on Netscape, any help with that would be appreciated. * The user interface (UI) was reorganized to make it easier to understand and use. -- All functions should now be available via menu, quicklinks should not be necessary. -- Most database table lists are HTML lists with links instead of the button approach. -- Administration console with information helpful for debug. UI: * Orders -- list-based -- shipping status notices -- automatic check of archive box when status=shipped -- list-based delete and archive operations -- lists are sortable on multiple fields -- status display for individual line items -- change size of list with Knar UI_SZ_LIST_ORDER * Customers -- list-based -- list-based delete and deactivate operations -- lists are sortable on multiple fields -- status display for individual line items -- change size of list with Knar UI_SZ_LIST_CUSTOMER * Item editor -- Select list of items to delete or edit in sequence -- Now have different "views" for merchandising, pricing, inventory, etc. -- checkbox-based deletes -- item fields to display set with UI_ITEM_FIELDS -- separator fields set with UI_ITEM_BREAK -- cross_category field added to merchandising table * Content -- Templates easier to create -- Editor allows change of template * Layout -- button builder does on-the-fly items -- fixed bugs in search builder * Merchandising -- new menu, includes affiliate stuff * Reporting -- Fixed cast problem with PostGres reports -- More consistent look/feel for reports * Administration -- New information screen that should help with diagnosing trouble -- Table select/edit now consistent with other editors -- Selector rows can be sorted via column, forward and reverse -- Table display properties can be easily edited Core: * Database update forms (mv_todo=set) now can set fields in multiple tables when there is a common key. * Changed SpecialPage defaults for "search", "order", and "checkout" to reflect longstanding defaults in demo catalogs. * Fixed bug in fixed-field (PriceField) pricing, introduced sometime in Minivend 4. * Added GUESS_NUMERIC parameter to databases, which operates by checking field types in SQL and by looking at the import data on DBM. You can see this in operation in the UPS tables "Ground", etc. * Removed auto-index of key field if POSTCREATE statement exists. * Added some more better auto-numbering support. Still not ready for the UI. * Found bug in Vend::Table::DBI->inc_field that caused a quoted value when really was a number. * CSV imports now are fully as functional as others, can do indexing, numeric guess, etc. * Added "value" widget type for [accessories ...]. * Added [tmp var]scratch setting[/tmp] and [scratchd var] tags to purge Scratch when setting/accessing variables. This can improve session write speed if setting a large value which will only be used in the current page. * Added "tabbed" filter, and some other Filters. Now you can add your own filters persistently with: Sub <