Just ringing in.. I’d have originally planned to email Leevi a huge list of requests in regards to an e-commerce platform and still intend to do so. But my list and ideas keep on expanding.
I feel that the platform should incorporate essentially most of what is already present in EE, similar to what the the Simple Commerce module does - albeit, it’d need to have a better workflow, perhaps its own independent tab within the publishig entry page.
Most of the content that would be necessary to function as an E-commerce platform should incorporate what already exists in EE, as in the determinants for pricing, quantity, etc. can be inputted into Field Groups. With this workflow, we can have different types of weblogs/field groups for different types of products.
Of course, the E-commerce add-on being a module, it’d have to pull some of the weight and have consideration for things such as live inventory count, statistical output, an add-on for consumer order history, etc. Hence, it’d have to interact/update/modify some of the weblog fields upon the purchase, cancellation, or rejuvenation of inventory.
One of the huge advantages I see with going this route is that, if I were to own a blog that talked about products for example, I can essentially input both the blog entry and the product page in one go on what may seem like two entirely different sites, but that are actually the same.
Perhaps resources should be spent going this route rather than a temporary solution like a bridge.. Just my two cents. This is a foundation to build upon, and doesn’t rely on the hobbyist developer in others to figure out how to use both. In the case of most of the open source E-commerce scripts out there - no matter the age (Magento included), skinning is quite overwhelming to many.