[ic] Interchange 4.9 demo

[Mike Heins]

Quoting Nathaniel Scott (cobalt@thecyberimage.com):
> Mike & Crew....
> 
> Just checked out the demo of 4.9 and WOW!  I wanted to say to the community
> very nice work -- this looks very corporate and professional, I love the
> tabbed items & spreadsheet view, can't wait for it to go out of beta, it's
> come a long way....
> 
> We're currently running 4.8.x on several sites (most in development) with
> very nice results.  After getting over the learning curve (thanks in large
> part to this list and the archives) we keep being astounded on how easy it
> is to modify Interchange beyond the stock configuration.
> 
> I'm going to put 4.9x on our in-house machine & take an in-depth look at the
> changes and try adapting our sites to it (shouldn't be too hard).
> 
> Just one question, should we focus our effort on new sites using the 4.9x
> platform, or just stick with 4.8x and modify them when 5.0 comes out?
> 

I would use 4.9. In many ways, it is better code than 4.8. It is in
production use in quite a few sites that I know of, and has taken many
thousands of orders in production already.

It is mostly finished, but there are possible changes remaining
in a few areas. Only one has a real possiblity of affecting
a created catalog:

    1. Product options -- we intend to retain complete and 
       transparent compatibility with current setups, though.
       (Jon Jensen is lead)

The rest are all in the UI and won't have any real possible effect
outside that sphere:

    2. Product options UI makeover. (Jon Jensen)

    3. UI HTML -- we have already made some major cosmetic changes
       but more may be in the offiing. (David Kelly, Hamish Braddick,
       Mike Heins)

    4. Table selection -- the current listing of items code is done all
       in page, but will probably move to a [table-select ...] tag just
       as the table editor moved to a tag. (Mike Heins)

    5. Menu loader code for admin UI and [menu ...] tag. (Ton Verhagen)

    6. DAV support for content publishing, single-button change publish
       (Mike Heins)

The other changes we are contemplating (forum admin pages, product ratings
in foundation demo, multiple-key support for databases, new tax, shipping,
and encryption wizards, new category_vertical based on [menu ...] tag, etc.)
are mostly incremental and don't have much central effect.

At some point, we hope by Dec. 1, we will look at progress in these
areas and do a feature freeze for beta release -- leftover issues would
move to 5.1-->5.2. Then a code freeze for gamma/RC release, then real
release of 5.0 sometime after the first of the year.

-- 
Mike Heins
Perusion -- Expert Interchange Consulting    http://www.perusion.com/
phone +1.513.523.7621      <mike@perusion.com>

Clothes make the man.  Naked people have little or no influence on
society.  -- Mark Twain