Abstract: A sales system is described that enables fast, efficient shopping by customers, and thereby increases sales and encourages customer loyalty, while simultaneously improving store management. An electronic device, which may be mobile or stationary, and which may belong or be assigned to (or accessed by) each customer, is used to access shopping information that might not otherwise be available to the customer during shopping. For example, a personal digital assistant or information kiosk may be used to provide specific product information and complete a sale thereof, or to provide suggested purchase lists and best routes through the store during shopping. The sales system is multi-modal, so that a plurality of input modalities (such as voice or auto-id techniques) are simultaneously available to the customer.

Abstract: A multimodal system may include a user device, a multimodal application, and an application server. The user device includes a multimodal browser operable to receive web content in a multimodal markup language for presentation. The multimodal application includes interfaces implemented as server pages using multimodal markup language tags including tag attributes. The multimodal markup language tags are operable to present interface elements of the server pages in one or more modes and to accept input associated with the interface elements in one or more input modalities. The application server is operable to process the multimodal markup language tags such that the server pages implemented using the multimodal markup language tags can be displayed on the multimodal browser.

Abstract: A sales system is described that enables fast, efficient shopping by customers, and thereby increases sales and encourages customer loyalty, while simultaneously improving store management. An electronic device, which may be mobile or stationary, and which may belong or be assigned to (or accessed by) each customer, is used to access shopping information that might not otherwise be available to the customer during shopping. For example, a personal digital assistant or information kiosk may be used to provide specific product information and complete a sale thereof, or to provide suggested purchase lists and best routes through the store during shopping. The sales system is multi-modal, so that a plurality of input modalities (such as voice or auto-id techniques) are simultaneously available to the customer.