F.A.Q.
Featured Software
XF is an application framework for large and medium scale projects. A web application can be a complicated and dynamic thing but XF has the structure and tools to manage it.
QJAX - Quick small CMS with AJAX formsQJAX is an XF spin-off with a unique blend of features. It's all you need for a simple Content Management System. It even has AJAX-based forms.
Datarama Report GeneratorDatarama is a query-based report generator which can output HTML, PDF, RTF or XLS (spreadsheet file). It can also provide editing of specific data items. The user may supply parameters to guide the query. This is a really nice way to generate reports.
QXF form builderQXF is an XF spin-off that's great for rapidly implementing simple stand alone forms.
Tidbits
Doing interesting work for interesting people...
Calendar based content system
QJAX system provides automated content management for EveryoneReady, a subscription based training site with a monthly rotation of content relevant to organizations working with volunteers.
This project's extensive administrative interface allows the content management system to provide a customized selection of features to each group of subscribers.
Dynamically generated pages provide access to the current edition, promotional material for the next edition and an archive of past topics.
XF Shopping Cart - Discounts
The XF Shopping Cart supports many different schemes for pricing and discounts. Clients think of new ones, the repertoire expands.
One client has been offering special discounts, each one different and in effect for just a week, automatically turning on and off according to schedule.
Examples:
- 10% off each item in the shopping cart unless they have bought five or more items, in which case they get a 15% discount.
- 15% discount on any of a short list of featured products.
- Free shipping (not exactly a discount but another promo)
Another client makes regular use of XF's systems for applying discounts to whole classes of product and promotions, granting the discount if the user enters a certain code.
Catalogs of Antiques
Pook and Pook is a busy auction house. They were already managing their auction items in a database but putting together online catalogs was a tedious task for their webmaster.
Things are better now. They upload a file dumped from their existing database, upload images (if it's an illustrated catalog), and the XF system generates all the pages involved in viewing the items, searching, etc.
"Thanks a million…..much easier and less tedious overall at this point!" -- pookandpook.com
Shopping system coordinated with Blog
The Quakerbooks Bookstore features an interesting melding of SB3D's XF dynamic content system and the popular Movable Type™ blogging system from SixApart.
We worked out a flexible way for XF generated displays of merchandise to be included in Movable Type™ content and we gave XF a way to create blog entries automatically as new merchandise is added to the system. The result combines speedy merchandise display and comprehensive shopping cart support from XF with blog-based content such as book reviews. Each book has a detail page where the book display from XF is married with the blog's robust commenting system.
The website is interfaced to their Square One™ bookstore management software. After new books are added to that system, and the cover art is uploaded to the website, the inventory information is uplaoded to the website and XF automatically updates the pages. Similarly, web orders are automatically downloaded into Square One™ for processing by that system.
Steve's column:
Sometimes you have perfectly useful data in a file or database but it's not the right format for the task at hand. Maybe we can help.
This web siteYou're looking at the long overdue update. How's it look in your browser? I've kept the same general look but it's all served up by my QJAX software now and has some more contemporary features.
