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Rise Above Marketing holds a copyright in the contents of
this document. It may not be reproduced without
permission.
Gene Sigalov
gs@riseabovemarketing.com
Simple Auto Loan Calculator Specifications
1. A picture is worth a thousand words: the following websites feature Auto Loan Calculators
which have the core functionality that we want in our calculator—they are ordered from
most favorite to least:
a. http://www.bankrate.com/brm/auto‐loan‐calculator.asp
b. http://www.cars.com/go/advice/financing/calc/loanCalc.jsp?mode=full
c. http://www.mortgageloan.com/calculator/auto‐loan‐calculator
d. http://www.edmunds.com/apps/calc/CalculatorController
2. Vision: To create the best auto loan calculator available on the web. The natural question is
how is “best” defined, especially as applied to a calculator. One might ask, don’t all
calculators do the same thing? Though all calculators essentially do the same thing, the web
gives us an opportunity to create a uniquely user‐friendly and interactive calculator. Our
ideal calculator is the one that begs to be used.
We think that a financial calculator carries the stigma of being difficult to use and
understand. We would like to dress up our calculator so that it is both intuitive and
interactive.
3. Some Ajax Elements of our Vision:
a. There must be a checkbox to toggle advanced user mode which would expose those
fields below that are marked as A for advanced.
b. When a user places his cursor into a field a tip should pop‐up with an explanation of
what information should be placed in the selected field. Code for the desired effect
can be found here:
http://nicolae.namolovan.googlepages.com/jquery.inputHintBox.demo.html.
However, the explanations must fade in slower and the bubble colors should be
lighter and less obtrusive than the example in the link.
c. screen scraper that sucks prevailing interest rate value from bankrate.com and sets
that interest value as the default for the Interest Rate field.
d. For those por