The Bookstore

This is a demo of a simple on-line bookstore, where you can browse the list of books available, and find information about the selected title by viewing the information on the tab behind. The bookstore demo uses a small example database, but it is easy to extend, or to connect to your existing databases.

You can add, view and remove titles from your "shopping list", and proceed to order when you are ready. If you want more comprehensive information about a title than what is provided, you can "set sail" to the publishers site to find out more about it. Images, sound files, and applet bytecode is together approx. 120kB, downloaded in abt 30 sec. with a 33kbit/s modem. The applet runs in any Java enabled browser.

An advantage of using applets for online trading is e.g. the possibility to give the customer a nice way to browse your products, and order, and possibilities to do things like sorting the available data in different ways, and getting instant feedback from the client computer, rather than having to request it from the server. This reduces server load, and also makes it possible to more intelligently cache the information retrieved, so that the user doesn't have to wait each time he or she wants to check an interesting title a little extra.

One purpose of this demo is to show the look and feel of a simple applet built on Java AWT components. The Bookstore exemplifies the use some of the standard Java GUI (Graphical User Interface) components & controls like buttons and textfields, and some third party GUI widgets like re-sortable list and tabbed panels:

Re-sortable list control

Tab Control, Tabbed Bar Control

Button

Textfield, TextArea.

With the re-sortable list, also called column header control, you can browse the titles, and re-sort the data with respect to author, date etc., by clicking on the gray field, the header, at the top of a column.

You can select an interesting title with a mouse click, and then click on the tab "Review & Info" to find out more about the title. The tabbed panel has a text field for every entity of the bookshop database. The longer review of the selected book is presented in a TextArea component with a scrollbar.

If you're want more information, you can click on the "Set sail to publisher" button, which will open a special browser window that takes you to the publishers site, if it is possible. This is an example of how an applet can guide your browser across the internet. By clicking on the "Capture it"-button you add the title to your shopping list, which you can view by clicking on the "Items selected" button. When you're done, you can proceed to the order page, to order your books. All these user interactions are done without interactions with the server, in the demo. In a real bookstore application, relevant data would be downloaded when needed, using intelligent caching strategies in the Applet.