Favourite Actinic Sites

[Darren B]

OK following on from another thread, What are your favourite actinic sites and why

I have alwasy liked one of Lee's

Atlantic shopping http://www.atlanticshopping.co.uk/

My reasons are the clean layout and ease of use. I find it a nice site to look at with some great little features to make the users shopping experience better. Why i never implement some of these on my sites i will never know?

So whats yours and why?

[george]

Anything Left-Handed

Its been on the go for years, and was once of the reasons I stayed with Actinic in the first place. Its perhaps not as design friendly (narrow, and left aligned, is that deliberate I wonder?) as many, but crams in a lot of stuff, too much for some perhaps but it works for me.

Strangely, I'm neither left-handed nor even a customer.

My moneys on the steel cube (or whatever it is) thingy getting a few mentions.

[NormanRouxel]

I like My Silver Balloon because you'd never know it's an Actinic site.

PS Check out that page Darren.

[Darren B]

Interesting it also has my boys name https://www.silverballoon.com/acatalog/Ciaran.html

Dont normally see gaelic names

[grantglendinnin]

Quantum Electrics/Atlantic Shopping are two of my favourites.

Does anyone know an estimate number of sites using Actinic, inurl:acatalog doesn't really give the full picture anymore.

[Darren B]

Probably not far off grant, but now its changable it will get futher away over time mind and i doubt there is 2,500,000 shops either

[NormanRouxel]

In the old days Actinic used to embed "cdbactag" on the pages. A quick search will show how many of these are still around.

[Jan]

Interesting it also has my boys name https://www.silverballoon.com/acatalog/Ciaran.html

Dont normally see gaelic names

Silver balloon are a very clever company, even when a name isn't there they can often make it for you, particularly when it's an unusual spelling for a particular name - the song quality is good as well, it's not a case of just a gap with an appropriate name stuck in there, the songs flow well - my girls are too old now but we had them for each of them when they were little.

Regards,

[TraceyHand]

In the old days Actinic used to embed "cdbactag" on the pages. A quick search will show how many of these are still around.

wow
that unearths some OLD sites!!

[grantglendinnin]

'cdbactag' does indeed appear on very old Actinic sites, I'm surprised they're still in existence. I do wonder how many of them are still active and receiving orders though.

Would be surprised if many of them get any 'decent' rankings in Google, due to the nature of this text - most of the sites I have looked at have this tag in the footer as hidden text (font colour same as background colour).

The embarrassing thing is - the checkout procedure has barely changed in 10 years. LOL. All the old sites I looked at still use the Java Applet for payments, was this the only payment option short of 'CC details sent separately'?

Looking at these old sites is depressing - it really does show you how 'ecommerce software' could stray so far from its fundamentals.

[NormanRouxel]

I remember asking ages ago about "cdbactag" and I recall that CDB is Chris Barlings initials, AC is Actinic Catalog of course, and TAG is just tag.

[Chunkford]

The embarrassing thing is - the checkout procedure has barely changed in 10 years. LOL.

I've seen a questionnaire from Actinic the other day asking about the checkout layout/procedure and customer account functionality, so at a guess I think we are going to see some changes in the near future

[gabrielcrowe]

http://origins-photography.co.uk/acatalog/A000.cat

omg, netquote? V2? w00t!

[gabrielcrowe]

All this digital Archeology has gotten me interested.

Could CB or someone else who knows the whole story let me know the history of the Actinic catalog application?

[NormanRouxel]

It's not quite that old.

It's the 'VERSIONFULL' => '8.5.1.0.0.0 HERA', parameter that tells the story.

The $::g_pCatalogBlob / 'VERSION' => 2, is still there, even in V9 sites.

I think you can only see the VERSIONFULL from V5 onwards. I checked a few cdbactag sites and they had no embedded VERSIONFULL and thus must be V4 or earlier.