Glossary » shopping cart
shopping cart
a common metaphor used in web-based ordering systems. Users search for products, then add them to an abstract shopping cart. The entire list of items in the shopping cart is listed when they go to an order page to finalize the order.
The abstract metaphor is mostly necessary because of the difficulty of implementing, in a way that is compatible with a wide variety of web browsers, a dynamically-updating list of selected items for an order that remains visible to the user throughout the order selection process.
