A shopping basket system includes a shopping basket component and a wish
or gift list component. The functionality of the shopping basket system
may be invoked via a graphical image, such as an icon, on a web browser
or a desktop of the client computer. The user may browse registered sites
on the Internet and drag and drop products into the user's shopping
basket. All products may then be purchased concurrently regardless of the
site that the product was found. The drag and drop capability is provided
by the programmability of the shopping basket. A common schema can be
employed for describing items (e.g., products and services) to be
purchased from registered sites. In one aspect of the invention the
common schema is provided in the extensible Markup. Language (XML). The
shopping basket system is provided with a search engine for searching for
products on a user's wish or gift list over the Internet. The search
results are provided to the user, which can be added to the user's
shopping basket list. In one aspect of the invention, the shopping basket
system is programmable, such that any application program may access a
user's shopping basket system and add items to the user's shopping basket
based on items found in a user's wish list.
