Subject: ANNOUNCE: MiniVend 1.02 on CPAN - SSL release
From: [email-masked] (Mike Heins)
Date: 4 Apr 1996 19:26:41 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.announce,comp.lang.perl.misc

The 1.02 release of MiniVend is now available on CPAN. Among
other features, it supports SSL security and improved searching.

The main URL for MiniVend is:

	http://www.iac.net/~mikeh/mvend.html

You can find pointers to participating CPAN sites there,
or just download the file CPAN/authors/id/MIKEH/mvend102.tar.gz,
where CPAN is any participating CPAN archive.

Much of the credit for MiniVend goes to Andrew Wilcox, author
of Vend, which MiniVend is based on.

Applause, complaints, suggestions and bugs to:

	Mike Heins, <[email-masked]>

                        M I N I V E N D
                                       
   MiniVend is a full-featured electronic catalog system (commonly known
   as a shopping cart) with online ordering capability and support for
   SSL security. It is designed to provide an interface complete with
   automated entry of orders into your database.
   
   MiniVend is freely-redistributable under the GNU General Public
   License -- you can download it via FTP at any CPAN archive.
   
     * Users maintain a "shopping cart" for ordered items
     * Catalogs can be of almost unlimited size with excellent
       performance
     * Full support for SSL, with DES encryption of credit card numbers
       on disk
     * Pageable searching, with support for Glimpse or standard text
       search
     * Full database capability, unlimited and configurable fields
     * Catalog pages can be built on the fly from the database or
       pre-made, with automatic selection
     * Supports GDBM, DB_File, and NDBM databases
     * Full frames support
     * Works well with all browsers
     * Back end order entry capability
     * Full client-side imagemap support, including frame targets
     * Automatic installation and configuration
     * Remote administration via the web
     * The vendpage utility maintains parallel HTML and Vend page trees
     * Runs under Perl 5 and almost any UNIX
     * Designed to be secure, runs with taint checking enabled
     * User-customizable colors and backgrounds
     * Built-in online help capability
     * Central control of buttonbars
     * Sales tax calculation (zip code and state)
     * Shipping calculation (quantity and/or weight)
     * Blank field checking
     * Configurable order reports
     * Much more

   Andrew Wilcox wrote Vend, the copylefted shopping cart software.
   MiniVend is based on Vend V0.2, but enhanced considerably, adding
   support for SSL security, frames, powerful search capability, remote
   administration, superfast server mode, client-side imagemaps,
   user-customizable help and displays, and more. This version of Vend
   includes an automatic configuration and installation utility, and
   continues to be free under the GNU copyleft.
   
   Frames, the new windowing technology Netscape has proposed for HTML
   3.0, significantly enhances the electronic catalog experience, letting
   the user maintain a context as they navigate through the catalog.