Attributes out of stock??

[hookah]

I carry items in many colors and have attributes using a dropdown selection to choose color. At times we are out of stock on some colors.

How can I make the out of stock colors still show up but say "out" next to them? I want customers to know that those colors are normally available but just temporary out. The only option I see is to remove the value.

Second problem. If I remove the value leaving only one option, it turns into single radio button even though I specified dropdown.

[kuroi]

How would your store know that you are out of stock for some colors? Are you using stock by attributes?

The conversion from pulldown menu to radio button is coded into the attributes module. I'm guessing that it was felt to be good practise not to make customers have to actively select the only option available - which in most situations would be appropriate. To achieve what you wish you would need to override the attributes module with a version that didn't make that switch.

[hookah]

Ok so what about the out of stock attributes? I am a very heavy user of attributes. I am not using the stock counters as I use a drop shipper and I continue to sell an item until they inform me that they are out, then I need to be able to mark it as out of stock.

I sell shisha tobacco which some brands come in as many as 30 flavors. At times some of those flavors are out of stock. But I really don't want to remove the attribute. Each brand has a different set of flavors available and it would be very difficult to remember which flavors to put back each time.

Isn't there some way to mark a flavor as out of stock? It would be nice if it could show up in the dropdown list with (OUT) or something next to it but the second best option would to make it disappear completely.

How would your store know that you are out of stock for some colors? Are you using stock by attributes?

The conversion from pulldown menu to radio button is coded into the attributes module. I'm guessing that it was felt to be good practise not to make customers have to actively select the only option available - which in most situations would be appropriate. To achieve what you wish you would need to override the attributes module with a version that didn't make that switch.