MiniCat
Web eXPert catalogue Builder is the latest E-commerce
program from Prostar Interactive. MiniCat Web eXPert contains tools to gather
information, images, multi-media and text to structure this information into
a multi-level electronic catalogue. MiniCat Web eXPert converts this electronic
catalogue into web pages forming a complete web site suitable for E-commerce.
An option for output to CD-ROM is also available.
The design or style of the web site may be chosen from a set of pre-defined
Site Styles. Custom Site Styles may be defined in MiniCat Web eXPert to give
virtually unlimited flexibility in site design. Third party shopping carts
may be easily integrated with the web site. MiniCat Web eXPert comes with
support for several third party shopping cart systems.
A Site Style is a set of Page Style definitions and other information that
pre-define the layout for each page type in a catalogue: catalogue, Category,
Item and SubItem pages. Any Site Style may be applied to any catalogue.
Minimally, there are 3 Page Styles in a Site Style: a catalogue page, a Category
page and an Item page. If the catalogue contains SubItems there will be a
SubItem Page Style. If the catalogue allows ordering of items, then E-commerce
support is provided via an Order Form Style that is associated with the Site
Style.
The catalogue layout may be customized even further, by associating an alternate
Page Style for a Category, an Item or a SubItem. For example, Item pages in
one Category may have a different style from those in another Category. In
this case a Site Style acts as a default template for the catalogue, with
specific Page Style associations overriding the default Page Style specification.
A Page Style contains web page formatting information (i.e. HTML statements
or other markup language) and Prostar defined extensions called Hooks and
Tokens. Hooks and Tokens identify places where catalogue data and other information
should be substituted during the web page building process. One important
result of this technique is that MiniCat Web eXPert is independent of the
underlying code in a Page Style. For example, the code within a Page Style
may be the current version of HTML, a newer version of HTML or some other
web or browser based markup language (such as XML). In this sense, the Page
Style metaphor utilized by MiniCat Web is ready for the future and will not
break as web based markup languages such as HTML change in the future.
One of the goals of MiniCat Web eXPert is to simplify the user's job in creating
and maintaining a web site. Even a relatively simple catalogue may require
10's or even 100's of web pages. Via the relatively simple Site Style and
Page Style mechanisms, the layout and content of a catalogue's web site is
defined. MiniCat Web does the rest during the web page building step, turning
these styles into actual web pages forming a complete web site. For those
who need it, significant customization is also straightforward.
