.csv Import Hangs on Accelerator
Traditionally we've been having issues with .csv imports on Websphere 6.0. Normally we'd get about 12 products imported and on the next one Websphere will explode in a ball of fury sending flaming body parts all over the office (more precisely it hangs on the "please wait..." screen). As a work around I tried importing a file, then adding it to it's respective sales catalogs, this would typically take about 2 minutes at the most, then I'd wait for another 2-3 minutes before importing another file. by doing this I was able to import upwards of 18 products before the great explosion.
It's kind of a slow process and isn't so much a workaround as it is just delaying the inevitable but until further notice this is the best we have 
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sIFR 2.0.5 upgrading
Freemotion uses a cool little web-addon called sIFR. sIFR is a text replacement utility that will take normal text, and transform it into flash. This way you can style the site and have it look like you coded it without banking on the end user having your same fonts. Good idea in theory, not so useful if you just updated your flash player to version 9, 115 release. Now if you started running sIFR on version 2.0.5, you should be fine, if not well you're in for a slight headache.
The best method to get your site fixed is as follows.
1 - Get your original font, or head to somewhere like daFont and download a suitable replacement font.
2 - Contact your friend flash-master (Erik in our case) and give him your font files.
3 - Do this (straight from their documentation) ; "To export your new typeface, open the sifr.fla file (which is included in sIFR-2.0.5.zip) in Flash Professional, and double-click the invisible textbox in the middle of the stage. If the "Properties" palette is not already visible, open it by selecting "Window > Properties", and select which font you'd like to use from the drop down menu. If you select a TrueType font, you can also create bold and italic styles for your font by clicking on the "I" or "B" buttons."
4 - Take the new files that Erik gives you (should be something like FONTNAME.swf) and place them in your project folder with the new .js files. In theory, you should now be up and working!
This problem only exists for the 2.x sIFR, however since 3 is beta, you may be better off just patching your existing copy. sIFR 3 does look promising, but they seemed to have changed the structure of the product quite a bit. This whole mess points back at adobe who is changing things up in their actionscript handling. This may be security related, or it may be that they are gearing up for Flex 4.
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Icons for everyone!
While working on the "Country Selection" box for NordicTrack it became quite apparent that we needed to have little icons of different country flags. We originally commissioned our in house design team to make a few, and then Drew discovered this website that is dedicated to open-source iconery -> famfamfam . So check it out and grab the icons you need for the site.
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Item Upsells
Lately I've been sentenced to create upsell displays on the shopping carts of both NordicTrack.com and ProForm.com. I wish I could say I now know how I did this but the truth is I don't really. For NordicTrack it was a bit trickier because we had to create upsells for apparel (which requires the user to select a size and color) as well as for iFIT cards (which require the user to select a level). Basically what we did (and by we I mean Jason) is checked the Items Root category to see if it was an Apparel Item or a "Personal Training" item, if so the jsp would include another page which was determined by the root category. once we had established that the item was either Apparel or Personal Training we loaded the 'defining attributes' which are essentially the sizes, colors and/or levels of the actual product. Keep in mind that there were separate pages included for iFIT and Apparel (that is to say the extra page was different for iFIT than it was for Apparel). Once this was done it became a simple matter of validation and adding to the cart both of which were done using javascript.
The ProForm site was quite a bit easier since for one it didn't have any apparel or iFIT cards, and the second reason it was so easy is because it was already mostly coded -- just needed a few tweaks to get it running. Actually I think the ProForm site was coded quite a bit better than NordicTrack.
the files needed in both scenarios are:
NordicTrack: (OrderItemDisplay.jsp, ICONeMarketingSpotDisplay.jsp, ICONCatalogEntryThumbnailDisplay.jspf, *SizeColorSelector.jspf, *IFITLevelSelector.jspf )
* New File
ProForm: (OrderItemDisplay.jsp, ICONeMarketingSpotDisplay.jsp, ICONCatalogEntryThumbnailDisplay.jspf)
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Useful JScript Event Handlers
I was working on Freemotion - more specifically the consumer side where you can choose a vendor/distributor in your area - and noticed that the page didn't work in Firefox, but was working flawlessly in IE. Naturally this had to be fixed, as it is pure blasphemy to have IE working when Firefox doesn't. So I checked the event handlers on the select box and found an onkeyup, and an onchange. Now normally the onchange should be sufficient to change the page, however I ended up using an onmouseup in conjunction with the onkeyup. It fixed the problem, and now I post what I found on the interweb in my search for event handlers.
Useful javascript event handlers:
* onAbort - The user aborts the loading of an image
* onBlur - form element loses focus or when a window or frame loses focus.
* onChange - select, text, or textarea field loses focus and its value has been modified.
* onClick - object on a form is clicked.
* onDblClick - user double-clicks a form element or a link.
* onDragDrop - user drops an object (e.g. file) onto the browser window.
* onError - loading of a document or image causes an error.
* onFocus - window, frame, frameset or form element receives focus.
* onKeyDown - user depresses a key.
* onKeyPress - user presses or holds down a key.
* onKeyUp - user releases a key.
* onLoad - browser finishes loading a window or all of the frames within a frameset.
* onMouseDown - user depresses a mouse button.
* onMouseMove - user moves the cursor.
* onMouseOut - cursor leaves an area or link.
* onMouseOver - cursor moves over an object or area.
* onMouseUp - user releases a mouse button.
* onMove - user or script moves a window or frame.
* onReset - user resets a form.
* onResize - user or script resizes a window or frame.
* onSelect - user selects some of the text within a text or textarea field.
* onSubmit - user submits a form.
* onUnload - user exits a document.
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Ecom DevBlog
So this is it, this is where I'll keep all my notes of things that I learn while studying the confounding IBM Websphere commerce.
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