Abstract: A system, method and program of the invention enables a client in a network of computers to participate with a plurality of merchants across several Web servers in electronic transactions for the purchase of products from the merchants. The client is enabled to make one transaction with one merchant dependent upon the results of another transaction with another merchant. More specifically, each item that is available from any merchant and is selected by a customer using the client is represented at the client as a separate object having states associated therewith. A buy, hold, or conditional state will set a lock on the corresponding object at the Web server such that no other transactions with other customers can take place for that specific item while the current customer is actively using it. A conditional state sends a signal to the merchant to assist in contacting another merchant in order to cancel a previous transaction that the other merchant had with the current customer.

Abstract: Disclosed is a system, method, and program for magnifying displayed content downloaded from a server over a network. Information is received indicating selection of a region of the displayed content to magnify. A determination is made of at least one region of the selected region including image content. The server maintains a high resolution file version and a low resolution file version of the image content. A determination is then made as to whether the selected image content from the displayed image file is the low resolution file version. If so, a command is generated to retrieve from the server specific byte locations from the high resolution file version including the image content in the selected region. The specified bytes are less than all the image data bytes in the high resolution version of the file if the image content in the selected region comprises less than all of the image content maintained in the high resolution version of the file.

Abstract: A method and implementing system are provided in which a variety of items are offered for sale to customers through an interconnection network at a single web site. Different discounts for volume purchases or product group purchases made by customers are offered to the customers and the costs associated with the discounts are automatically allocated among a variety of product suppliers on a predetermined basis.