extra tables needed for centre colomn

[ben harry]

Hello, excuse my poor use of words as i have no idea on what it is called what im after.

Basically, what id like is instead of having as an example one banner saying 'New products for june' as a total width of the screen, id like this to be made twice as narrow so i can have two small banners with different titles with specific products listed below each one.


Id be grateful if someone could help me out how to achive this

I do have an image of what id like, but its saved in my documents so i dont have a url for it to save here to show.

Thanks
ben

[niccol]

I think I understand what you are trying to do.

For instance you want the 'what's new' box and the 'featured products' box on the same page but side by side?

If this is right you can achieve it by selecting them both to be displayed in the admin section ( configuration / index listing ).

Then edit stylesheet.css to include a couple of rules like:

#whatsNew{width:48%;float:left;}
#featuredProducts{width:48%;float:right;}

Hope this helps. If you meant the advertising type banners the technique would be quite similar.

Nik

[niccol]

Oh, and a thought that I had just too late - as usual.

You have floated these two elements now so probably should check if there is a clear:both somewhere beneath them in the code. It may not be an issue but it is good practice anyway and stops some unexpected behavior. If you need to put one in then you can use a <br> tag with a clearBoth style. It think it would need to be in the tpl_main_page but I haven't actually looked so may well be wrong. Let me know how you get on or send a URL and I'll have a look

Nik

[ben harry]

HI, thanks for your help. The above has kind of done what i was wanting, but i have managed to attach an image now of more of what i was wanting to achieve.

[niccol]

OK. Well, that is a bit more involved than I understood.

None of it is impossible but some of it would take some work. And one would need to know how it fitted into the page as a whole. Personally, I think that this is a bigger task than a thread conversation can cope with. But as usual I am willing to be proved wrong.

It may well be that someone out there has done a similar thing before and can help you. At first glance it looks like quite a lot of coding.

One thing that might be an issue that needs some thought is the conditional attribute menus. ( If you select rolls royce then the models for and only for rolls royce are displayed ) I seem to remember reading a thread about something like this so the information about how to do it may be out there already.

I think that you have a few options.
* If you try this yourself then it might be a steep learning curve dependent on your starting knowledge of html / css / php and javascript.
*You could simplify the layout but I can see that you would probably not want to.
* You could create a xhtml entry page for the shop that looked like this and then use zen cart in a more usual way behind the entry page.
* Or you could find someone else to do it for you.

As an aside, a page like this is going to be fairly poor from the SEO point unless you include some other, preferably text based, stuff elsewhere on the page. Just one more thing to think about!

Really sorry that this isn't one of those 'just change this option in the admin section' type posts but there you go.

Maybe one of the more experienced users can give you more information.

Nik

[niccol]

Was just reading another unrelated thread and came across the quote:

You might want to start a separate thread to ask this question as this really does not pertain specifically to the Improved Attributes Controller mod.. However the quick answer to your question is this.. What you are asking about is a "Conditional Attribute" (the available values presented for one attribute is determined by the value you select for another). This feature is not supported in the current 1.3.8 flavor of Zen Cart.. I dunno if it is a feature of the upcoming 2.0 off the top of my head.. I don't think there's an add-on for it either (don't quote me on this though..) Another option is posting a request for this in the commercial requests forum.. HTH

By Divavocals in January 2009.

So, maybe that is an answer for conditional attributes. It isn't impossible but would probably involve some php and javascript coding.

Nik

[ben harry]

Hi Nik

I appreciate your input, i'll keep researching to see what i can come up with, that image that i posted i think is from an oscommerce site so i know it should be possible with zencart, its just finding that special someone that has the knowledge on it.

I'll keep my findings updated here.

Thanks

[niccol]

Well, you may want to investigate product types.

The issue is going to be the conditional lists, I think, how ever you manage it. I think that is going to need a bit of ( not very complex ) javascript.

The layout itself should be fairly straight forward.

Nik