Issue #21: January 21, 2003

By Harald Ponce de Leon

January 21, 2003

GZip Compression
Checkout Confirmation Edit Links
Security Proposal
Forum Post Regarding Contributions
Forum Statistics
Contributions Mirrored

GZip Compression

New GZip compression features have been commited to the CVS repository, which, when enabled, can compress the HTML text sent to browsers by up to 80% in filesize.

The implementation of the feature should be compatible across numerous server environments and will only compress the HTML text if the client browser supports it.

The feature requires PHP >= 4.0 to be installed on the server, and takes advantage of native PHP features for versions >= 4.0.4.

Checkout Confirmation Edit Links

Edit links have been added to the checkout confirmation page which are attached to the shipping address, shipping method, billing address, payment method, and product listing areas.

This allows the customer to make last minute changes to the order by clicking on the relevant edit link.

Security Proposal

A security proposal has been posted to the Developers forum which wraps-up the issues presented in the 'Showstopper - Privacy Violation' thread.

The proposal takes care of security and privacy issues by having the session implementation work on a cookie basis by default.

This is a step in the opposite direction of the projects compatibility goals, as browsers with cookies disabled will not be able to perform shopping actions, however this move is for the customers best interest and can be disabled by the store administrator if wanted.

The proposal can be read here:

https://www.oscommerce.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=31928

Forum Post Regarding Contributions

Fritz Clapp has made a terrific post in the forums regarding how contributions should be made in regard to coding standards.

If you have been making contributions, or are planning to, the posting made is a must read to gain further acceptance of your contribution.

The forum post can be read here:

https://www.oscommerce.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=30047

Thanks go to Fritz for the post!

Forum Statistics

Congratulations go to the community for posting over 100,000 messages in the support forums! The number of postings is currently at 102,495!

The number of registered users, since the new forums have been online, has reached 4,171 users, with an all time high of 53 users being simultaneously online on the forums which was set earlier today!

Contributions Mirrored

The contributions are now mirrored by SunSite.dk to ease the bandwidth on the main server. New contributions made will be copied to the SunSite.dk servers in less than 24 hours with the download link being updated when the copy occurs.

Thanks go to SunSite.dk, who provide free web-based services to open source projects, for hosting the contributions!