X-Cart forums

[ARW VISIONS]

true, very true

[gb2world]

Okay - I'll give it one more shot - but you have to step outside your singular focus on your design style and imagine you have to support many different designers, and also customers who want to use the cart as is off the shelf.

What you did is exactly what X-CART is good for - they give you open source code, they supply php data to the templates through smarty, so you can create virtually any design you want in any way you want. You should post your products_t to completed mods - a lot of people will likely benefit. Or better yet - Instead of asking QT to hire you - a better approach would be to design a skin and sell it. Many have designed css templates - you can compete with them.

Imagine that a client has asked you to use the same data in the link that you provided - but they want you to fit 4 or 5 columns in the same space. You use the same template you just developed, but clear both on every div within the item class. Also imagine that your client thinks it looks sloppy unless everything is lined up in a grid - all the titles are lined up horizontally, all the images are lined up horizontally, all the prices line up horizontally and all the buttons must line up horizontally. In addition - your client says they don't want to be constrained by thumb heights , title description lengths, etc. and don't want extra white space where it is not needed - so you can not use a max height setting.

You can meet their requirement, or just tell them they have to put up with a broken webpage because you are a css purist.

I'm speculating, but that appears to be the requirement the QT engineers were using.

Can it be done with css - probably, but I think you need php and/or smarty to calculate max required heights per row. Is that requirement unimportant or unreasonable? Debatable, but remember that QT supports people who use the cart as is off the shelf without hiring someone to change the template. Those people might appreciate the grid display so they don't have to dig into code or hire someone.

Before you insult the engineers at QT and and decide that your css skills are better than anyone there - try and understand they might have different requirements and be operating under other constraints. Maybe you should be attacking the management for the requirements imposed instead of the engineers? Who could know. But their lack of skills is really your opportunity.

[Sisom]

Well, I think a lot of us know that our CSS skills are apparently better than whoever does the CSS design for QT (there may be somebody who is good at CSS, but maybe they haven't had a chance to work on the CSS!).

Okay - now I understand what you are saying, where you say they don't want extra white space, but do want everything lined up horizontally. (The penny has dropped.)


I will post my products_t to completed mods, that might save somebody else a lot of time.

[gb2world]

Thanks - I may use it if I need a css design for products_t for 4.2. As you noted - it was not that hard for 4.1 - but your digging into the loops in 4.3 would save time.

I'm not sure how a lot of you can know that your skills are superior to the QT engineers. But I can't defend much of the css that is released in 4x branch, except to say it has been slow progress, so I cede that point to you - just without the implication about the QT engineer's and programmer's skill level.

If you are really interested and motivated, you have the opportunity to influence V5 by commenting on LCv3. If they follow the drupal standards - the css methodology is all strictly defined by the API & coding standards so that people who design templates and skins and mods will all be consistent. There are many templates - one of which is a clean design intended to be reminiscent of the CSS Zen Garden site. What you end up with is many css files based upon the themes you are using and the mods you have enabled - but you also have css aggregation and compression modules. It always looks like bloat when you don't use it - but it is a compromise with the requirement to support lots of needs. There are drupal themes that intend to reduce css bloat, but at the expense of full flexibility.
You may be right to worry about how QT is integrating to Drupal, if they are following the css (& other) standards - but they have made an alpha version available for their customers to start looking.