[ic] SUCCESS! Coordinated search for area/category links

[Doug Alcorn]

For your demoing pleasure I present
http:/www.lathi.net/univcell/cgi-bin/index.html.  Last night I
finished the last part that makes this a working demo.  I still have
some generic cleanup to do, but it all works.

Things to notice:

o The logobar uses IC to output javascript so that the second select
list options update based on the value of the first select list.
Since it uses javascript, there is no page reload to get the options
updated.  Also since it uses javascript, this site won't work without
it.  I still need to implement the <noscript> version of the site.

o The selected values of the selection lists persist across the entire
user session.  The action of the form is a middle page that "Does The
Right Thing".  Right now I have a default category that is browsed
when a specific phone is selected.

o The leftside links perform a coordinated search where
category=whatever category and addl_category is whatever was selected
from the selection lists.  I completely ripped off bar_link to make
foo_link. :)  Bar_link takes an optional "extra" argument that is a
template for building the link.  I changed the "extra" part to be a
scratch variable that is appended to the scan list.  An example:

[seti myprofile]
sf=addl_category
se=[scratch my_addl_category]
[/seti]

[loop blah blah blah]
        ...
        [loop-exec foo_link]area my_addl_category[/loop-exec]
        ...
[/loop]

o Once you select a category from the left side, if you change
selection from the logobar the category stays the same but the scan
results are updated to the new addl_category.  I did this with another
modification to bar_link in my foo_link.  Basically bar_link takes the
column=value pairs and builds a scan out of them.  I added an extra
va= for each of the column=value pairs.  This allows the results page
to easily know what category, etc. it is for.

Other than these points of interest, my catelog is a straight
'barry'.  In the spirit of open-source/free-software I am willing to
make my modifications available to whomever wants them.  I'm sure they
are not done the most efficient way.  I'm also sure there are many on
this list who could have done it faster.  But, this has been an
excellent learning exercise.  I couldn't have done it without the help
of several people on this list.
-- 
 (__)  Doug Alcorn (mailto:doug@lathi.net http://www.lathi.net)
 oo /  Unix Hacker
 |_/   "It's too late for paradise" (at least in this life)