Different product listing layouts for different categories?

Hi,

I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction for a question I have.

My client is a jewellery store and deals mainly in chains, you can see the intended layout for the product listing page I have here...

http://www.kmgraphicandwebdesign.com.au/pmce/store04.html

With these types of long thin images I think I would use the zen cart table grid layout. However for some categories like 'Assembled Pieces' their images will be more squares and I'd like to display these categories in the column grid layout.

I've been trawling the forum and have found two possible answers.

1. Adding a custom field to the category section in admin which will nominate which product listing template should be used for that particular category. I've had a little experience with php and if there's a module or step by step instructions somewhere I can porbably follow them, but wouldn't know how to do this from scratch.

2. Creating a stylesheet for individual categories. I haven't been able to find too much on this. Can someone please let me know if this would suit what I'm trying to do?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Kate

Sorry was I not being very clear?

My preferred method is number 2. Creating a stylesheet which will apply to just one categories product listing page.

IE. The Assembled pieces product listing page will be laid out different to show products side by side.

Is this possible?

I also saw something mentioning that if I do it this way I would need to make sure the Category ID never changes? Would this be a problem, or do the category ID's change if you change the sort order?

Please help!

I'm not programmer enough to solve this, but I'm pretty sure that #2 wouldn't work. It sounds like you want the product listing to be one-across in the chain categories and three-across in the non-chain categories. That's not controlled in the stylesheet, even though category-specific stylesheets can be created.

I know someone here can offer a way to add an if statement that would check the category id (which would always be the same, BTW) and apply the proper row/column setting.

In the meantime, take a look here:

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=119512

Thanks heaps! That sounds like exactly what I'm after. I've gotten side-tracked trying to do other things, but will come back to try this out soon and update how it goes.