X-Cart forums

[naemsmommy]

Originally Posted by effour

will this mod work with variant images?

Yes, it works beautifully, see here:
http://babyplanetboutique.com/xcart/product.php?productid=489&cat=0&bestseller=Y

[naemsmommy]

One other thing I've been curious about. Did anyone else find that their pages took much longer to load once this mod was installed? I have a similar mod on another site and the pages are very fast to load. So I don't know if it's this mod, or something else that is causing my pages to load slow. Does anyone know if there is an online tool to determine why a particular page is loading slowly?

Thanks!

[Tye]

My site is running pretty slow also and when I add detailed images - I get this error:

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/equerrya/public_html/include/templater/plugins/function.thumb.php(2) : eval()'d code(1) : eval()'d code(1) : eval()'d code on line 35

My original image is large - 2014 x 1569 and 1mg in size

[TelaFirma]

Originally Posted by Tye

My site is running pretty slow also and when I add detailed images - I get this error:

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/equerrya/public_html/include/templater/plugins/function.thumb.php(2) : eval()'d code(1) : eval()'d code(1) : eval()'d code on line 35

My original image is large - 2014 x 1569 and 1mg in size

This is a very large image to start with and will use a lot of memory to rescale. You might try turning off the unsharp mask. This will use less memory. Alternatively you might start with a smaller image.

[eaglemobiles]

Originally Posted by TelaFirma

This mod is now being distributed with Lightbox2 integrated as the popup. The images that are shown in the popup are generated by the image mod and the size (width) is controlled by the configuration setting in X-Cart Admin for this mod.

So - for all of you that wanted it, it is here

How we will get the latest version as we are all waiting for the updated version.

[Tye]

Originally Posted by TelaFirma

This is a very large image to start with and will use a lot of memory to rescale. You might try turning off the unsharp mask. This will use less memory. Alternatively you might start with a smaller image.

Yeah - I resized this down to 800px wide - and it now works pretty cool - thanks

[TelaFirma]

I wanted to leave a quick post to let everyone know that the issue that I was having with PayPal has been fixed.

Also, I have updated the mod to use a JQuery version of Lightbox so that it does not conflict with wholesale pricing. The other JavaScript libraries like Prototype and Moo all have conflicts with the arrays that are built by X-Cart when you are using Wholesale pricing. JQuery does not suffer from this, so I am using a modified version of Lightbox to use JQuery. Since the JQuery script is packed, the scripts are smaller and load quicker.

Also, for those that were concerned about longer page load times, there was a small bug that in certain circumstances would cause the image to be generated again. This has also been fixed. This did not occur on all systems, but only a small percentage.

[naemsmommy]

Hi, can I please have the updated version of this mod? My e-mail address is contact AT babyplanetboutique.com.

Thank you!

[mffowler]

I just loaded the updated version, but it really didn't fix the speed issue. Took about 10 seconds (sometimes up to 20) to open a product page from a subcategories menu. Also, the mod doesn't really work well with variants. I also tried generating the html catalog as a work around but that didn't work for me as the images didn't generate correctly and catalog pages had no images. I could try and fix that, but am not really interested in html catalog generation every day.

Example: If you have color and size variations set for a product and have images set for all variants as X-Cart does and display a variant thumbnail under the main image (using this mod's option), you get an image for every variant (size and color). That's basically multiple rows of the same image...

I really like how GD Library sizes and scales the images as well as the Unsharp Mask, but I feel that there are a lot of complex things going on with product images especially variants - and I doubt all of these issues can be fully implemented and fixed. The theory of the mod is great, but it may be premature. Saying that, I have a site with no variant images and it works great!

So, I would recommend this mod for someone who just wants to sell products that are not a variant nature. I don't recommened it (at this time) for anyone with product variant images. As for the popularity of this and related threads associated with auto-generated product images, it is a trend in the majority of e-commerce cart packages and it would be nice for X-Cart to create this add-on that is tightly integrated with their core code and taks advantage of all the developments that we have seen in the 4.1.x lineup.

Back to using my own batch image processing and resize/Unsharp Mask scripts.

- Mike

[TelaFirma]

Mike,

I seems like you have a few different things going on here. First with the load time. The first time that any page is loaded, it will take longer. This is when the images are generated the first time. So, if you have a product with 2 detailed images and a thumbnail then you will actually be generating up to 10 or more images that first time. 1 for the main product image, 4 small thumbnails (product, thumb, detail, detail) and then 5 larger images for the popups. The popup images are generated when the product pages loads so they will be able to be used in the JafaScript for the popup.

After the page is visited (by anyone) the first time, the image generation will not happen again (unless you change one of the parameters) and all the images will then be drawn from the cache directory. If this is not happening, then there is something out of the ordinary with your particular install or server configuration that we need to look at.

The variant images function just like the default X-Cart functionality with the addition of having them available for popup detailed images. If you have two variants, (one red and one blue) and have an image loaded for each variant then yes, it will generate small thumbnails for the main product image and then small thumbnails for each product variant image. When you change the options drop down to a different variant, the main product image will change to that variant image - just like default X-Cart functionality. The addition is that these small thumbnails are also shown below the main product image and are available for popups.

It sounds like you have something different that you need to happen with the variant images than what X-Cart does out of the box. When I look at your store it does not look like you are having X-Cart change the actual product image when you change the options but are only showing color "blocks" below your main image. In your particular case I would recommend still using variants (for the SKUs) but not using different images for all the variants. Instead use the color blocks as detail images. Variant images are only useful when you have full images of the variants. Otherwise they are just details of the overall products.

Contact me so that we can get this straightened out for you. I have many other people using this mod with variants and are not having these issues.