In our class, this is another "non-programming" chapter and week. (I will get into why Chapter 12's JavaJam assignment is not really instructive anymore.)
The book gets into e-commerce. It is by far the furthest digression from writing HTML, but most normal clients will likely require sites that need to be static pages, not bare HTML and CSS. So, it is good to be in touch with reality - even if it is pretty gnarly and gross. Fortunately, it is not more so than required.
I sort of wished the book mentioned that various sites, such as airline ticket sites, are known to manipulate prices if you return to the same ticket listing, rather than immediately buy the ticket offer without the chance to do any price comparison. (It is even suspected - or basically known, even "unofficially" - that sites, such as Ebay and Expedia, dynamically change listed prices to anyone who does not use a VPN.)
Under "Risks of E-Commerce", security issues and privacy issues are mentioned. Well, unfortunately you cannot teach a mindset to people. For the first, the book is extremely outdated - no one should be entering a credit card or login credentials to any site that does not have HTTPS (the padlock, made possible by TLS and SSL). For the second, basically do not expect any reasonable level of privacy from any law enforcement entities when the site most likely stores any amount of data about you in any database... unless you are Bitwarden, apparently. However, Bitwarden has a business model that relies on trust and E2EE and thus is not your typical online business (which is technically different from e-commerce, but still worth mentioning).
You can significantly promote the overall privacy of your website by not using Google Analytics. (First, ask yourself if you really need analytics; and if the answer is still "yes", then strongly consider using open-source alternatives that are built from the ground up to provide analytics without draconian privacy invasive features. We live in a post-Snowden revelation era, so the textbook should expect HTTPS internet connections to be the sane default, not bare HTTP.
One passing thought: there is a lot of business-to-business e-commerce activity, such as Lenovo. To be honest, until very recently (when Lewis from Unbox Therapy started the ThinkPad X1 Carbon and X1 Nano hype train), Lenovo never seemed to be widely known to your average consumers of computers. (I am definitely biased, for sure - even though I am starting to cool off because I would like to see more devices not ship with Intel ME... but that's a major digression.) This is because Lenovo (and more specifically, the contemporary versions of ThinkPads) are typically sold via business-to-business transactions. For example, schools (such as universities) and other corporate businesses buy a lot of ThinkPads (or ThinkCentres), but these products do not usually get the spotlight attention of your average everyday consumer.
The e-commerce issues are certainly lacking. For example, intellectual property is the leading cause to why Intel ME exists in all modern hardware. Cyber security could be its own course. The "Taxation" bullet point is mostly outdated now, since major online sites, such as Ebay and Amazon, enforce state sales tax - not to mention that the textbook author is a bit old-fashioned and apparently believes in the "goo-goo good government", since the following was written: "Our local governments are losing revenue for funding worthwhile programs." While factually true, I think the author is basically borderline naive to trust the government so much like this - has she ever thought about the assassination of JFK, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, 9/11, or the Snowden revelations? Probably not, but that is speculation and we should not gossip like that.
I have no idea why this section exists. To introduce the concept of encryption is probably alright, but most students are trying to just an IT major as fast as possible (many of them probably do not even need to perform any security related tasks on a day-to-day basis for their actual work). I suppose the section is trying to work towards digital certificates (for websites, but also for drivers... but that is mostly for Windows or Apple - I am sure drivers can be signed in Linux, but I am not sure how that is implemented.) The textbook ought to at least mention that you can get a certificate for your own site pretty easily and for free with Certbot (which was created by the EFF) and Let's Encrypt.
For Section 12.7, this brought up to me (for this week's assignment) that one of the few components of the internet that is not open-source is payment processing systems with credit (or debit) cards.
I have never heard of "stored-value cards". Are these like MiFARE cards used for paying for public transit rides?
Digital wallets are mentioned. I supposed these are more like 2013-era technology that had to be significantly revised to still function in 2021. For example, I have never heard of Yahoo Wallet - though it sounds like a literal honeypot, since Yahoo is always getting hacked for absolutely no good reason. There is also this hardware wallet called Visa Checkout, but honestly Venmo and CashApp are more usable and recognizable in 2021. I feel this textbook should not be mentioning these, since the only ones that have made it to 2020-2021 are Google/Android Pay and Apple Pay.
Oh boy - I do not know why "digital cash" gets mentioned, i.e. cryptocurrency coins. Yes, the textbook is really showing its age. It lists Bitcoin as if it is the only widely implemented cryptocoin, as if it is the year 2013 and Daniel Fraga was still posting videos on YouTube. The only worthwhile cryptocoins are Monero and Zcash - though the latter is a bit weaker with respect to anonymity than the former. Lastly, I am baffled by the mention that Dell somehow accepts Bitcoin payments, but somehow it is dang near impossible to find the correct landing page to purchase Dell laptops that have Ubuntu preinstalled, instead of Windows??? What about purchasing a Dell laptop with no built-in webcam??? On the other hand, the author is not trying to scam the readers with fraudulent cryptocurrency coin hype at the very least - unlike all of these cryptocoin YouTubers... at the very least recommend hardware wallets to store cryptocoins, instead of just repeating the fad about their being "the future".
Section 12.8 is the most important for the weekly assignment. You can probably get most of your ideas from this section alone.
There is a reason why our class skipped the JavaJam assignment: the dummy PHP script provided by the textbook for the online store no longer functions, since the script apparently no longer exists on the companion textbook website. (Maybe the publisher and author should have worked out some public Git solution, such as on GitHub...) Anyways, the JavaJam site will look more "complete", even though the textbook treats most of the chapters after Chapter 9 as effectively self-contained.