X-Cart forums

[GlennM]

Man I am so close on this I can just about smell it...

What I want is the menu boxes to be laid out in a graphical design I have done. ALL I want displayed in the boxes themselves is the menu contents relevant for each section ie: Categories, Special, Help, etc.

Could someone let me know or point me to a thread which has the files I need to modify to do this...?

Glenn

[leon]

- skin1/customer/categories.tpl

- skin1/customer/special.tpl

- skin1/help.tpl

You could modify those template files in order to take out the titles and include only information, and use classes on your CSS file to determine a specific design output like a background image under your categories for example.

[GlennM]

Thanks Leon,

WARNING: The following is how I have done it to my site, I don't know if it is the "correct" way but it has worked for me. Backup your site before attempting any of the following changes; I won't be responsible for you killing your site. These instructions assume you have knowledge of FrontPage and image slicing tools in programs like Photoshop

How I did it in the end was to:

• Create my graphical box (aim for 150 pixels wide) in Photoshop and slice it up with the slice tool. Create enough versions with the top menu as "Category, Management, Help, Authentication, Special, Inventory, Your Cart, Your Profile, Administration, Products, News. Save all the image files into a directory your x-cart can access
• Open the graphical box with FrontPage and set the side bars as background for their cells and the central body as background for its cell (this means the box will dynamically resize vertically regardless of the amount of menu choices that appear)
• Use Webmaster Mode in the shop to pin down the individual menu boxes ie: admin/menu.tpl help.tpl provider/menu.tpl etc etc etc
• Using admin/menu.tpl as the example, copy and past the entire code into the central body of your graphical box in FrontPage BUT be sure to paste it using the HTML window otherwise the formatting gets screwed
• Then without changing anything else, copy and paste the entire code from the HTML window of FrontPage back into admin/menu.tpl and what you should get is the graphical box with the entire Management menu including the title etc in it (don't worry, we aint done yet)
• Repeat this process with all the other menu bars not forgetting all the customer side menus
• Once you have done the same to all the other menus, go to menu.tpl and remove everything but the code {$menu_content} and your menu boxes should change to only having the menu content with none of the other standard formatting

Like I said at the start, I don't know if I have done this the "correct" way, but it is working for me in my test environment.

Glenn

[adpboss]

Sounds like we should get this moved to Custom Modifications.

Good job Glenn.

[leon]

Originally Posted by GlennM

Like I said at the start, I don't know if I have done this the "correct" way, but it is working for me in my test environment.

Glenn

Really good, and absolutely correct.

Tip: you are using a similar logic to the one applied in the new SPEED BAR, so if you would like to add SIDE FRAMING on a design for menues take a look at the skin1/customer/tab.tpl file to add additional effects to your designs.