X-Cart forums

[Sisom]

Hi, is it me, or are there no such styles as
.first
.highlight
.last
which I see in the minicart HTML?
<li class="first">
and
<li class="highlight last">

according to Firebug, there are no such styles affecting these elements in the minicart!

It sure does make editing an X-Cart site difficult with all this strange CSS... not recommend for newcomers at all (I'm very au fait with HTML and CSS, but the mess the CSS is in is proving to be a bit of a nightmare...)

[gb2world]

The templates can support many different skins. Your skin might not make use of a particular class or id, while another one might.

The presence of a class definition in a template also allows designers the opportunity to change and update styles without having to update the templates. You can add style to a class if you need to, or ignore it if you do not. So what you see as a nightmare could prove to be helpful to to other designers and allow QT architects to use a common template for many different designs. The more common the template - the easier it is to upgrade.

A newcomer might have a different perspective than you. If they want to update the style - they can just update the css if the class definition is already there. If it were not, they would have to open webmaster mode, find the template and add the class. Once they updated the template - it now cannot be automatically patched when they upgrade.

If you know how to use firebug - it really does not add difficulty. You can see what is being used and what is not.

If you remove all of this from the template, then you add complication to the templates - with different templates required to support different skins. The more the templates have to be unique - the more difficult it will be to upgrade and maintain them.

You certainly can optimize the templates and css to your own design, but a newcomer who wanted a different design might find that to be nightmarish.

[Sisom]

Thanks for explaining that, it makes a lot of sense. So I can just ignore styles that don't apply to my particular template, but if I do want to use those styles for my own purposes, I can create a style and use it, without it affecting the template.

[gb2world]

Exactly- or clean up the templates - and worry about that when you have to go through an upgrade. For example - you are on 4.2.0 - which has known bugs. When you upgrade - then you will see what really is a nightmare and not intended for newbies. The more you have to modify the templates - the more difficult an upgrade becomes. Best to keep your changes in the css files as best you can.
In my opinion - when QT fixes the upgrade problem (by changing the software architecture) - that will lead to more complex css that will appear to be even more bloated, but the design layer will be more separated from the template and programming layers. So - you'll be able to change the design, without changing the other layers. To achieve that - the css will appear more complex than if you had custom designed it for a single website.

[ARW VISIONS]

I usually completely change all the CSS