QUOTE(joeyadms @ 30 Jun, 2008 - 02:28 PM)

Yeah, because you want you code to be modular and reusable, and to make a cart that can be modified slightly to be a drop in on any site would take a crap load of designing before even touching a keyboard.
Oh yeah I heard that song before. It is so hard to create something truly modular, everytime I think I got it, I either hit a wall or it becomes too complex to be truly useful.
Well I guess the hard part would be connecting the cart to the products database. I can also see the word XML coming to mind, but like you said a lot of planning. But hey, I say there are no good tutorials that teach you how to plan your design on the web, if you can include this in your tutorial it can be truly valuable.