Free Template "Future Zen"

Kuroi,
Love your Future Zen template. I modified it to suit my needs, however, I have one glitch I cannot solve. How to change the background color behind the Sideboxes to match the Main Page background? I tried just about everything in the CSS page to no avail. See at:
http://store.jmw-ce.com/
Thanks,
Bob Ski

Bob Ski:

How to change the background color behind the Sideboxes to match the Main Page background?Glad you like the template and are finding it useful.

The background color for the sideboxes is built into the sidebox images themselves. They can be found in the images directory of the template, or better still you can download the original photoshop files from which they were generated from the downloads section where you downloaded the template originally.

Kuroi,
Thanks for your reply and solution.
That solves the mystery.
Regards,
Bob Ski

kuroi:

It's not just you. I was beginning to think nobody would ever notice (or comment). I was aware of this when I posted the template originally, but made a conscious decision to leave it like it is. This isn't intended to be a finished template, but rather a gentle nudge for new Zen Cart users along their own templating path. So I didn't want it to be too perfect.

Hint: add a little padding-bottom to your .sideBoxContent and upload to your server to see how easy it is to maintain designs using CSS.

Hi

I downloaded your template a few days ago, which is FABULOUS. I just switched to Zen Cart after spending THREE WEEKS struggling with oscommerce and getting nowhere. This is soooo much easier!

I have a few small problems though:

a) I'm a total newbie - and don't understand WHERE I'm supposed to make the changes you mentioned above (I don't have a .sideBoxContent file as far as I can see?

b) I cannot get rid of the header no matter what I do. Right now I've managed to upload MY header but it's superimposed over the original header. How do I get rid of it??? (tried all the directions in previous posts in this forum, but none worked).

c) The NEW PRODUCTS FOR DECEMBER box, the font is too big so it's leaking outside the box. Somebody else asked this question last year but didn't get an answer? Anyone know where I can change it? (I haven't changed anything, it downloaded like this).

d) Don't know what happened but now all the boxes are aligned on the left hand side with a huge gap on the right hand side. How do I get the page centred?

THAT'S IT I THINK :no: . It really is a beautiful template and is exactly what I needed for my new website. THANKS KUROI, it's really great and much better than the original ugly Zen template :-)

I'm glad you like the template. I wouldn't be quite so hard on the classic template though - though not to my taste either, from an ecommerce point of view it works, and has provided a solid foundation for literally thousands of online stores.

Your questions

a) this is a change to be made in your stylesheet.css

b) if you are referring to the header image, then this too is defined in the stylesheet.css file, though an alternative to changing to stylesheet would be to name your header image "header_bg.jpg" and use it to replace the one that comes with the template.

c) this sounds strange. I haven't seen it before and so would need to see it on your site to be able to see what is happening. Do you have a website address?

d) by default it is centered so the short answer is that we would need to undo what you did that changed it. To know what this might be, I would again need to actually see the site.

Hi.
Great template , liked it and using it. Future zen V136 (probably too soon!)
However I have a problem!
A customer has advised me that on his computer, the site does not dislay the footer image correctly, it cuts off the product display. He uses a very wide/large moniter on very high resolution using Windows XP explorer 6.
I have been unable to recreate the problem but he has sent a screen shot
Could anyone check it out at

http://www.thepocketmoneyshop.co.uk/ourshop

Screenshot here
http://www.thepocketmoneyshop.co.uk/ourshop/screenshot.jpg

It is probably stylesheet prob but as yet have not found it as does not happen for me
Thanks Dave.g

From the screenshot, I think that this is IE7 and on my super wide hi res screen I can reproduce it.

You're absolutely right that this is a stylesheet problem, but will probably be surprised to hear that IE is perfectly entitled to cut off the content in this way. It's easy to show why, but more complex to explain why it doesn't do it all the time.

But to cut to the chase, it's easily fixed.

Here's the problem ...

You have assigned a very small height to a class which describes the div that contains the New Products box. Here's the offending CSS> .centerBoxWrapper {

margin: 0;
height:32px;
background-image:url(../images/title_cap_left.gif);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
background-position:top left;

}Removing this or setting it to 1% should clear the problem. However, as I'm not sure what you were trying to achieve with this, I can't really say what knock on effects you might have to deal with.

It appears to work most of the time because the contents of the box push it open wider. However, as the contents are in floated boxes they are considered to be outside the pages main flow and IE is therefore perfectly entitled to ignore them when working out where the footer should be positioned. By removing (or reforumulating) the height constraint you should find that the height of the box around the new products is calculated to reflect the height of its contents and as it is not floated, will be taken account of when positioning the footer.

[quote=kuroi;307287]I'm glad you like the template. I wouldn't be quite so hard on the classic template though - though not to my taste either, from an ecommerce point of view it works, and has provided a solid foundation for literally thousands of online stores.

Your questions

a) this is a change to be made in your stylesheet.css

Where please? I tried changing several parts of it that had something about padding, but it made absolutely no difference whatsover.

b) if you are referring to the header image, then this too is defined in the stylesheet.css file, though an alternative to changing to stylesheet would be to name your header image "header_bg.jpg" and use it to replace the one that comes with the template.

Finally got rid of the header.jpg but now need to know how to centre my header?

c) this sounds strange. I haven't seen it before and so would need to see it on your site to be able to see what is happening. Do you have a website address?

Nope, not yet - I don't want to upload anything yet as I currently have an oscommerce shopping cart up and, so far, it looks better than the zen cart one so I don't want to change until I know zencart is working properly.

There's a screenshot of the problem on the 2nd or 3rd page of this thread - as I said, somebody else had the same problem but nobody ever answered her. Basically, the words 'New Products for December' are shoved to the right hand side of the blue bar so now they are leaking onto the body of the mainpage (ie: half ON the blue bar and half OFF the blue bar) and, since I managed to get Future Zen to now take up 100% of the page the blue bar is now too small. How do I lengthen that? :-)

d) Final question, hopefully - how do I get the back ground to be white (don't want the blue as my main site is white and I would like it to match). I tried to change it in the style sheet where i thought it needed to be changed but it made no difference?

Honestly, I am soooo frustrated with the whole world of shopping carts. OSCommerce was a totally feckin' waste of my time - 3 weeks and nobody on their forum could tell me why the photos stopped loading. Now ZenCart and it seems like it should be easy but having to find stupid bits of html code in files that I can't even find is driving me nuts!! Wish I could afford to pay somebody to do this because I wouldn't recommend ANYONE mess with this themselves :-(

My frustration level is at a point where I'm seriously thinking of going back to EBay ProStores and cancelling my website host completely. I HATE Ebay but at least on their ProStores, my website was up and running in an hour, and the shopping cart with most of my products loaded was finished in 5 hours. Easy, easy, easy. THIS is just difficult :-(

The answer to your first question depends upon which version of the template you are using. In more recent versions I adjusted the padding as I was getting frustrated answering the same question over and over. The change I made is here> .sideBoxContent {

background-image:url(../images/sidebox_content_bg.gif);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
background-position:bottom;
padding: 0.8em;

}To change the background color to white, you simply make the change shown below> body {

margin: 0;
font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 62.5%;
color: #000000;
background-color: #e5edf5; <------ change to #ffffff

}I am unable to find the screenshot to which you refer. Do you have a post number for it? I suspect that you might be referring to lawsu's posts, but he/she is using an old version of the template and had already resolved the problem before I got to it, so it offers no clues to your issue.

In any case, to solve these sorts of problems we generally need to see it, or be able to reproduce it on a live system. This is particularly the case with this template which is very robust and for which problems inevitably turn out to be issues with the way in which it's been implemented on specific sites. So if you're not willing to make your implementation available for me to see, there's not a lot I can do to help you to resolve your problems.

As to the rest, Zen Cart is a power system where patience and a bit of effort working out how it functions is rewarded with far more flexibility and functionality than ebay can offer and more built in features and control over the design and layout than oscommerce. The frustration that you are currently feeling is completely normal as you get to grips with it, but if it's more time and effort than you are prepared to put in, maybe ebay would be a better solution for you.

I have installed the Login Box and the email and password fields are extending over the box.. Anyone know how to adjust these fields or have experienced this as well?

lhhgbh:

I have installed the Login Box and the email and password fields are extending over the box.. Anyone know how to adjust these fields or have experienced this as well?If you take a look at the template file that comes with the login box mod, I suspect that you will find that these fields are set up with hard-coded size settings of "24". If you reduce them to 18, you should get field the same size as that in the search box just below your login box.

Thanks Kuroi,
That sorted the layout for my customer... you have the "style"
Dave.g

I have a small problem with the Future Zen template...

When the customers reach the login screen, the second blue bar with the menus is centered, and smaller than the first one (since normally sideboxes are displayed on the left size when the customer is log in). But the menus start before the bar itself, as they are aligned on the left.

Please see the attached file with a printscreen, as my explainations are not very clear...

Thanks,

sanji

Bonjour sanji

Savez-vous quelle version de future Zen vous avez installez?

En Français? 日本語でと思った。。。

Thanks for your answer kuroi, I think I am using the 1.1 version.

sanji

kuroi:

Bonjour sanji

Savez-vous quelle version de future Zen vous avez installez?
Wow kuroi
je ne savais pas que tu connaissais la langue de moliere :)

Well Kuroi do you know if Future Zen work with 1.3.7 ?
i am planing move to future Zen for my newest shop.

sanji:

En Français? 日本語でと思った。。。

Thanks for your answer kuroi, I think I am using the 1.1 version.

sanjiLa capture d’écran semblait indiquer que le site est en français, でも日本語よりイギリスが好きだ。So, version 1.1. was one of the very early versions designed for a fixed width site. You would need to make the actual image being used longer to match the width to which you wished it to stretch. More recent versions were re-designed to cope with liquid layouts and would automatically stretch this capsule for you.

Zapisto:

Wow kuroi
je ne savais pas que tu connaissais la langue de moliere :)

Well Kuroi do you know if Future Zen work with 1.3.7 ?
i am planing move to future Zen for my newest shop.Autrefois quand j’habitais en France il n’était pas ma connaissance de la langue de Molière qui semblait impressionner tout le monde, mais celle de la langue de Shakespeare. Une observation qui m’avait confondu beaucoup puisque, moi, je dirais que celle-ci est une langue archaïque. Evidement je suis béotien, mieux adapter aux exigencies de Zen Cart!

I’ve been concentrating on a delivery for a client so haven’t yet checked future Zen against a 1.3.7 installation. I will do so within the next few hours and either update it or confirm that you’re good to go with the existing version.

Zapisto:

do you know if Future Zen work with 1.3.7 ?
i am planing move to future Zen for my newest shop.The current version should work fine with 1.3.7. The only (very minor) caveat would be that if you plan to use Paypal Express Checkout, then you may wish to insert the following into your stylesheet> #shoppingCartDefault #PPECbutton { float: right }

Merci Kuroi,

But when I download the contribution from the link in the first post, I get this 1.1 version. Where can I find the latest version?

Thanks,

sanji