HTMList.com, A Web Development Blog by Synapse Studios

It’s been about three months since I broke into Magento for my first project here at Synapse Studios so I thought I’d give my impression on the shopping cart tool having gotten to know it a bit better.

Obviously a free, full-featured, shopping cart and e-commerce solution is great concept. I mean, really, one can’t bitch too much about something that is free (notwithstanding, say, venereal diseases or OScommerce…) Magento’s feature list is comprehensive: coupons, specials, multiple checkout and shipping options, tiered pricing, layered navigation, etc. Unfortunately, when you are neck-deep into anything, you get a better sense of the minor and major flaws lurking just under the rosy surface. Take a look after the jump at some of its more vexing problems.

Read More »

Tagged with: ajax, e-commerce, EAV, magento, reflection, xml

Posted in: Development, Reviews

Today, I’ll be reviewing php|architect’s Guide to Programming Magento by Mark Kimsal. Magento is a relatively new open-source e-commerce application written in PHP with a MySQL back. All in all, the Magento package is an impressive application with great administrative features and a flashy user interface. But under the hood, Magento is a complicated piece of machinery. At the very least, it’s definitely not for the faint of heart. So in order to navigate this maze of XML layout files, multiple template and style directories and the EAV database schema, we purchased Mark Kimsal’s Magento programming book. Find out what we thought of it, after the jump.

At first glance of the index, I got warm fuzzies all over. File hierarchy layout, EAV schema and custom module development…who wouldn’t feel a little happy? However, I’m not really the type of person to give accolades unless something is absolutely stellar. As such, this post will primarily be about the shortcomings of the book.

Read More »

Tagged with: book review, books, documentation, e-commerce, magento, php-architect, Reviews

Posted in: Development, Reviews

Bob asked me to make weekly blog posts outlining what I learn as an intern here at at Synapse Studios, therefore, I will commence my weekly installments. Hopefully these posts will be slightly interesting to those who wish to read and the cliché title is not too much of a deterrent.

Some of the main reasons I wanted to work here was to learn more about enterprise level web development and to learn how to work in a team. The first week has been very educational. I have been exposed to a myriad of new software and ideas. As an intern I am stowed away in the corner of the office and given slightly more mundane tasks than the rest of the group, but even these assignments have proven to be valuable to me.

Read More »

Tagged with: e-commerce, eclipse, framework, frameworks, magento, subversion, zend framework, zend studio

Posted in: Cool Stuff, Development

A good amount of shopping these days is done online, but any developer knows that creating eCommerce websites is not a simple or mundane task. To cook up your own solution can take months of designing, coding, testing and headaches and there is no guarantee that you, your client, or your client’s customers will really benefit from your labors. [Reinventing the wheel is a bad habit we broke ourselves of a couple of years ago when we realized smart open source solutions could be built upon and expanded with great success.—Ed]

At the heart of these eCommerce websites naturally lies the shopping cart. There have been many attempts by both commercial and open source developers to create solutions that can be ported from one project to another. There are literally hundreds of shopping carts available for developers to incorporate into their applications and websites. Instead of talking about several of them and discussing their glories and pitfalls, allow me to present one of the newest shopping cart applications which we think has a great deal of potential.

Read More »

Tagged with: ajax, e-commerce, magento, open source, shopping cart, web development

Posted in: Cool Stuff, Development, Tech News

We are pleased to announce that we have recently added a new programmer, Brandon Ching, to our company. This will be his first full week (he actually started last Thursday). He recently relocated from California to pursue his PhD at Arizona State University. I’ll leave it to Brandon to tell you more about himself in his introduction posting.

We look forward to adding Brandon’s expertise to our group and are excited for his input on our various projects. We currently have him working on a few of our e-commerce client websites that we will be migrating from various platforms onto the Magento e-commerce solution.

On behalf of everyone at Synapse Studios, welcome Brandon!

Tagged with: company news, e-commerce, magento, new hire, projects, websites

Posted in: People