Core Themes

[Cam]

Anyone using any of the new core themes?
Thanks, Cam

[DeanP]

I saw it on a demo - looks nice, and has some features I've been waiting for.

[hoosierdraft]

I saw it on a demo - looks nice, and has some features I've been waiting for.

Care to elaborate DeanP on "features" on the themes that have been added?

[DeanP]

Sure - what I've wanted most is some functionality that lets visitors see that a product has options when viewing search results or category pages.

Presently everything has an Add to Cart button, which doesn't make sense for products with options. A photo of a red shirt over Add to Cart very clearly states "click this button to add this red shirt to your cart." But what if that product has several color options, how do we signal that?

The best we can do is have 6 different product listings each with a different colored product portrayed in the image, or include text like "5 color options available!" in the product name and hope it doesn't get truncated. Boo! The new core templates will allow us to use Select Options in place of Add to Cart for products like these. Yay! I think it's long overdue.

You can often see Amazon signal options like this too. Or instead, they'll just exclude an Add to Cart button entirely, thus forcing visitors to drill into the product to see what's up.

Here's are some Core template examples:

http://dev-time-demo-com.3dcartstores.com/

http://dev-spring-colors-demo-com.3dcartstores.com/

Something to note: these templates (above) utilize mouseovers, which is slick looking but counterintuitive on two counts:

1) Like, I want to see what products have options at a glance... don't make me mouse over them to find out. I should just need to scroll down the page with the mouse wheel, not mouse around a 1920 pixel wide monitor like I'm playing a first person shooter game. blah.

2) The user experience doesn't change when viewed from a mobile device. Swiping down the screen quickly doesn't reveal anything. Only when you briefly tap and hold on a product do the appropriate buttons show up, and right under your finger.

This sort of thing irks me. Sure, it can be difficult to nail a design that's great on both desktop and mobile, and often times something works really well on one and only just so-so on the other. But this is just bad UX on both. >:( Anyway, I assume not all Core templates will be built in this way. I have high expectations on account of waiting so long for this new theme engine.

[Birdsafe]

Wondered if any of the themes allow you to separate the Quick Cart from Quick View. I don't like Quick View because shoppers click on it and don't see the full product description, thinking this is the product page and they end up emailing or phoning in questions that are answered in the full description. but if you turn off Quick View, it also turns off Quick Cart, which I want to keep.

[kalaja]

They look good ... are they already available ?

[onering]

We just upgraded to a core theme this week, finally retiring our ancient 1st gen static template (layout4). So far, so good.

[Cam]

onering Do you mind sharing your domain name. Thanks, Cam

[onering]

I sent you a PM

[NMTEACO]

DeanP Hi, can you say a little about what these core templates ARE? I can't find any real information on the website. Is it just new tags and new HTML? or is there something fundamentally different about the way they interact with the backend?

[Juniecles]

Having recently started a new subscription with 3dcart, I have decided to use a new core theme (using backpacks core), instead of going backwards. The problem is, I have product options and drop images, that I would like to update the main image when selected. The knowledgebase article https://support.3dcart.com/Knowledge...ticle/view/505 applies to the HTML5 or earlier themes.

I have submitted a support ticket only to be told I need to hire an expert, which is very disappointing, as I believe this should be a standard function.

With my newbie 3dcart knowledge and very rusty programming skills, I have managed to implement the following code, in bold below, in my (modified) listing.js file, within the function validateValues(...)

// IMAGE dropdown's
//alert(fieldnamemod + fieldnamemod.indexOf("di_"));
if (fieldnamemod.indexOf("di_") > -1) {
// Have its own image per drop down
SetSrc(what, "img_"+fieldnamemod, GetValue(what, "image_"+what.elements[i].options[what.elements[i].selectedIndex].value, form_id), form_id);
what.large.src= GetValue(what, "image_"+what.elements[i].options[what.elements[i].selectedIndex].value, form_id); //JDH
//don't process the price, because it'll be considered below when the dropdown option is parsed.

}

This works works initally but the Magic Zoom function will display the original picture.

My issue here is getting support on the dropimage function, with the newly introduced core themes. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

thx, June

[DeanP]

NMTEACO - I'm not on a Core template yet, but you can find a good bit of information at https://core.3dcart.com/

[NMTEACO]

DeanP I took a look at that the other day... but there seems to be no difference in the information to the regular templates. All variables are the same:

New Core:
https://core.3dcart.com/listing_x-html

Old Template:
https://www.3dcart.com/guide/template_listing_x.html

[DeanP]

I think the "The Modular Approach to Theme Building" section has the best explanation. It mentions that editing a sidebar in the new core templates would be done on the leftbar.html template file, whereas presently that file doesn't exist; right now that left bar content is buried in the frame instead of having its own designated template. The advantage provided by the former method is that you can do all sorts of editing to your left sidebar without touching your main frame template. This means you can update your entire frame without having to recode your sidebar into it.

[NMTEACO]

DeanP Thanks, I think I am starting to get it. It's a reworking of the template pages and how they work together... but not necessarily a reworking of how those pages interact with the backend.