Wax On, Wax Off
It’s amazing how much work has been put in the framework that can’t be shown on the frontend. Ok, the layout is now CSS/XHTML based, however it still looks like the same MS2 design 
There’s nothing wrong with the MS2 design actually .. it’s just a tad out of fashion for the new framework 
A glimpse of how we invision the Administration Tool to look like has already been provided, and gathered great feedback on it.
The remaining part of the project to touch up on was the web based installation routine, and I can tell you, it looks simple but boy does it give a hard punch! 
Even though the process is usually “next, next, next, next, success!”, some people do find the procedure to be intimidating with what parameters were asked for.
“Why do I need to enter the database settings in twice?”
That’s a fair question on the MS2 installation procedure. The thinking behind that was to enter an administrative mysql account during the database creation procedure, and to enter a normal mysql user account for general usage of the online store.
Security wise it was a sound idea. However practice proved otherwise and we now have the mentality that if you know enough about such things, then you know enough to get your hands dirty and to edit the configuration file by hand.
We’ll see how that lives up with the MS3 release
The “next, next, next, next, success!” procedure is still the same, however there are no more page interruptions and the parameters asked for are dumbed down to the absolute minimum. The more advanced stuff (SSL, Cookies, Persistent Database Connections, ..) are post-configuration settings that can be edited through the Administration Tool.
In fact, the only real parameters that need to be asked are the database parameters, as these cannot be automatically generated like the web server parameters. The web server parameters are still asked for just in case the automatic generation logic fails somewhere due to untested server environments.
Page interruptions are no more thanks to RPC calls (ala AJAX). This is absolute magic and am anxious to see how this works in the practice. This then gives us the MS4 release to make things perfect and to have an installation routine in a finalized 2.2 release that makes everyone happy.
Infact we hope people will just keep on reinstalling osCommerce now that it is so much fun to do so I know I’ve done it about a million times the past week 
I got so good at it I think I beat the world record for the fastest osCommerce installation in 1min 18secs. Here is the proof:
Ok, the world record part is just a minor thing. The more important thing is showing the actual installation procedure. If it’s too fast, hit your pause button
The last remaining secret is how the catalog frontend design will look like by default… 