Purpose This assignment uses a typical web-based retailing application to show the popularity of using client-side control technologies in practice. An online shopping application wants to provide good service to its clients. Some basic coding techniques are used to provide the following “needed” supports: To enable a personal touch feature, cookies are used to piggyback client’s previous purchase information. By doing so, relevant products can be recommended to the client when the client logins onto the website as a returning customer. A client’s credentials (e.g., membership information) are also piggybacked using hidden forms to ensure that the client has certain privileged accesses to warrant some promotions. A module using client­side JavaScript is used to calculate the final price of the purchased order for a client, so the client can have the transaction done quickly when the order gets submitted to the server. The application has implemented a security checkout (e.g., SSL technology) as most online applications do. In other words, when the client does the check out, all client’s credentials (e.g., billing information, shipping address) are indeed encrypted.

Tasks

Describe/discuss the potential issues in the above-described web application. What changes should be made to ensure that the issues you found could be well addressed?