Refine Product Listing by Attribute

[caesartrading]

Hello boys and girls!


I'm having a big revamp of my site, and whatt I am looking to add is a sort of product refining system.
I'm aware that something along these lines is/has been discussed, but can't find the post on the forums anymore.


To clarify what I mean:
A system where you can refine search results or product lisitings in a category using attributes (or even meta tags?).



Example: List of iPhone cases in the iPhone case category.
There are different colours available, and different types of cases.

Colours: Blue, Black, Red, Green, Yellow etc.

Case Types: Silicone, Leather, Plastic, Rubber etc.

On the left of the product listings, there would be a side box that has tick boxes next to these attributes. (Imagine the Amazon and eBay refining features, but more specific).
So, if I wanted to find a yellow case, I would tick the yellow checkbox. This would then refresh the page, and show me all the cases that are either yellow, or has yellow as a choice of colour for a case.

If I then wanted a Yellow Silicone case, I would also check the Silicone checkbox, which would again refresh the page to show me products that are made of silicone, and are either yellow or have yellow as a choice of colour for a case.




For what I understand, each attribute would have its own ID (which I think it has now), and so the refine results box would merely show products that only have the requested IDs attached to it.
There seems to be something similar with the current refining tool, which refines by letters of the Alphabet. Is there a way that this can be modified to use attributes instead of letters?



If I've confused the **** out of anyone, I do apologise.....




Any help would be appreciated, and if anyone know anything, please do tell!

Tristan

[kuroi]

This is one of those requirements that's much easier to develop for specific sites than to develop a generic solution, which is probably why there's not an add-on for it (or at least not one that I know of).

So it can be done, we have done similar, but of you don't have development skills yourself, I'd recommend finding yourself a freelance developer to work with you on it.

[caesartrading]

I was afriad that might be the issue... I was going to hire a freelancer a while ago to do something to my Zen Cart, but it would've cost me about £50 for a fairly simple task (which I ended up working out by myself!)

Though having said that, this seems a lot more complicated, so although I will have a look myself, I'll probably have to hire some guy from India to do it for me!