Creating Custom Tables

[pvon34]

Hello all, I am a brand new Zen user that has jumped into a web development project which is about half finished. This group has put together several custom pages within their store and I am working on making several more. I have become fairly familiar with how Zen Cart works and am starting to make progress, but I was just wondering if anyone could let me know if they know of a built in function which will help me create tables for a page. I have been able to get all the correct to the page, but am struggling to put it into a formatted table.

Also, any suggestions for quicker, easier or better design would be very much appreciated as right now I am just trying to drudge through the code and follow along.

Thanks in advance,
Patrick

[Kim]

Do you have a mockup of what you are wanting to do?

[pvon34]

Yes, perhaps something like this:
(see attached .jpg)

[pvon34]

It appears that I will need something which performs very similarly to the template:

tpl_product_info_display

I am just struggling with using all the built in Zen functions. Any suggestions?

Also, any suggestions on editing the design of the templates or do you just do it all using an editor and manually editing the CSS?

Thanks in advance,
Patrick

[Kim]

You could look at the functionality of the common/tpl_list_box_content.php and use it to display the information you supply it from and array.

[gjh42]

Out of curiosity, why do you need to build all-new custom tables for something like your illustrated layout?
You are showing a typical product listing page, and if you want differences in the display from other (standard) products, you can make a new product type within the system, or modify tpl_product_listing.php and its associates. Have you looked at those and determined that they can't do the job?

[gjh42]

For template editing, one of the best methods is to use Firefox and its Web Developer extension. Click on CSS > Edit CSS, and you will get a panel on the left showing the stylesheet(s) for the current page. Any changes will show immediately on the page, and when you are done, you can save the edits if you want to. Other tabs enable you to find relevant information about the page and elements on it.

Be aware that some styling is hard-coded in PHP files. You may need to remove it or specifically override it in the stylesheet.