Changing the page width

[hllight]

It's quite simple.

Design for 750px wide (or thereabouts), and know how your site will look to all users, or use a fluid layout.

I prefer the former.

Don't forget we are talking e-commerce here. People want easy navigation, speed, good images, security and confidence that you'll deliver the goods.

Zencart sites don't have to be works of art. Amazon isn't, or Play.com, or plenty of others.

Nothing annoys punters more than horizontal scrolling, and in my opinion, a site that needs it is a bad site.

Hello. You mentioned that you designed your websits at 750 wide. My site (www.aaadisplaygroup.com) is too wide and I cannot figure out how to change it. I have tried changing the width setting in the stylesheet.css but that did not seem to have any effect. Could you please point me in the right direction? I assume there is not faciility for auto scaling based on the user's screen resolution.

[misty]

Hello. You mentioned that you designed your websits at 750 wide. My site (www.aaadisplaygroup.com) is too wide and I cannot figure out how to change it. I have tried changing the width setting in the stylesheet.css but that did not seem to have any effect. Could you please point me in the right direction? I assume there is not faciility for auto scaling based on the user's screen resolution.

Stylesheet

/*wrappers - page or section containers*/#mainWrapper {	width: 950px;	margin: 0px auto;/*		background-color: #ffffff;	text-align: left;	width: 915px;	vertical-align: top;	border: 1px solid #ff0000;*/		}

[hllight]

Stylesheet

/*wrappers - page or section containers*/#mainWrapper {	width: 950px;	margin: 0px auto;/*		background-color: #ffffff;	text-align: left;	width: 915px;	vertical-align: top;	border: 1px solid #ff0000;*/		}

Thanks for your quick response. I tried that and it didn't do a thing. It is set that way right now.
I changed 950 to 800. The info your you described after "auto;" is commented out.

/*wrappers - page or section containers*/
#mainWrapper {
width: 800px;
margin: 0px auto;

[hllight]

Actually, I was wrong. I renamed the original file rather than overwrite it. For some reason, zencart was smart enough to know that and read the old file that I called stylesheetORIG.css. However, the change resized and shifted the screen to the right. Looks like I am going to have to hire someone to fix it.
Thanks for you help.

[rstevenson]

In case anyone else stumbles into this thread...

ALL stylesheets in the css folder for your template will be read by Zen Cart if their name ends in .css -- so if you want to leave one there for some reason but exclude it from ZC's consideration, simply rename it to remove the .css ending. Something like stylesheet.orig will work fine.

Rob

[kuroi]

ALL stylesheets in the css folder for your template will be read by Zen Cart if their name ends in .css -- so if you want to leave one there for some reason but exclude it from ZC's consideration, simply rename it to remove the .css ending. Something like stylesheet.orig will work fine.

This is not completely accurate. There are a number of naming conventions that determine which stylesheet is loaded for page, product, category, language, etc. Only stylesheets matching the criteria for the specific page being loaded will be included.

A detailed explanation of this can be found in the css readme file in the docs folder that comes with each Zen Cart release package.

However, rstevenson's point about taking care about what stylesheet live in a css folder is valid. I'd go further, any file that is a backup rather than not intended to be executed should not be kept on a live site. Zen Cart has a number of folders where it loads (or considers loading) all the files, and unless you know how to avoid it backups are always at risk of being mistaken for live files and used inappropriately.

[hllight]

GREAT information! I did not realize that. Thank you so much!

[rstevenson]

This is not completely accurate. There are a number of naming conventions that determine which stylesheet is loaded for page, product, category, language, etc. Only stylesheets matching the criteria for the specific page being loaded will be included.

You're right of course. I was being a little too emphatic, and not thinking about the page- or category-specific possibilities.

Rob