[FX.php List] [OFF] Those Whacky End Users

[Tim 'Webko' Booth]

>
>
> On the other hand, when orders are to be taken, users are motivated  
> to finish the process and get the reassuring "Order Confirmed" page.  
> I doubt that many online order systems (Amazon, ebay, any airline,  
> etc) writes the record before the sale is complete.  Perhaps I am  
> wrong about that.

Having just reverse engineered some eBay and Amazon like functions for  
a system, there is no way they are writing stuff out for every page.  
It's all kept in cookies and session variables until the checkout  
process.

And yes, having written any number of surveys and allowing for users,  
I'd also recommend writing everything to the database whenever you can  
- also allows for people to part-complete and return later to finish,  
which a lot of people appreciate on long or complex surveys.

I also kill caching on some projects (not the php caching, the web  
browser) so they get a warning when using the back button and have to  
refresh (writes the data again, but it's the same data) - seems to  
provide a level of resistance to encourage them to use the navigation  
on the pages...

YMMV

Webko