[thelist] Build vs. Buy Shopping Cart

[Rob Smith]

Hi,

I'm the creative type and someone who likes a challenge. So I've never
really thought about the Shopping cart idea and how to build one. So here
goes...

I have the basic principle down, but the theory has a flaw by design in my
eyes:

Customer...
1. Browses "Product Catalog"
2. Selects item
3. Quantifies quantity and quality
4. Adds item to "shopping cart"
5. Continues shopping or proceeds to check out.

What if the customer is shopping for shoes for example? In a rare case they
may actually want to order Shoe A size 13 in black, then Shoe A size 12 in
white.

According to the straight forward approach the user executes 10 steps
(repeat theory twice). And sadly enough this is primarily constant
throughout the on-line eCommerce industry. I'm hard pressed to find another
example. Feel free to chime in with "other" examples.

So my intuition on step 3 tells me that I need to add dynamic "add" and
"remove" processes. This is what I see in my mind after 3 iterations:

Product   Size    Color   Qty.    Price
Shoe A     XL     White    2     $14.99  | Add another | | Remove this |
Shoe A     L      Black    1     $ 7.99  | Add another | | Remove this |
Shoe A     S      Blue     3     $34.99  | Add another | | Remove this |

Fields "Size", "Color", and "Qty." are all dropdown menus. Price is a <input
type="text"> where its calculated based on the Qty. field. Product field is
a repeated field due to the original product selected. The "| Add another |"
and "| Remove this |" are buttons of course. But the trick I want to pull is
these two buttons do what they say WITHOUT refreshing the page. The page
will in essence lengthen and shorten on the fly. 

Ideas? 

Rob Smith