Toward solid UI implementation

[timbodrumbo]

Hi..just joined. i think the osCommerce solution is excellent, with its key weakness IMO being in the presentation area. I believe it is helpful for osCommerce to provide an easy to use template system (Is everyone already going crazy learning a different templating system for evey product!) I have been a designer for along time and understand many of the pitfalls made by current systems. Thoughts:

 

- make it simple, and based on lessons from the past (I have many ;-)

- build templates from the end markup, not code strings that are impossible to view in a local browser or design tool; it should be a text file that has variable holders and iterators if required, nothing more, certainly no logic or data calculations

- template switching on the live site

- remove dependencies on data and calculations

- provide API so templates can just include data items, no code; allow for integreation with say MODx

- a good model is PHPtal or XMl/XSLT

 

The design community cannot contribue nearly as well as in the case of POSTNUKE or the others, and many are out there now hacking the look and feel of OSCommerce and breaking things. (there is code int ehtemplates and it makes it all the more fragile.

 

My dream with these systems is to allow them to be integrated fully into a host web site (in a portal type fashion). For example, I am alsomost finished a site using the MODx framework (very cool). Now the client wants a store, and I want to put it up with the same look and feel wihtout the risk of hacking of the native display technology or the time consuming effort of modifying th elook and feel and learning yet another way to display info.

 

 

Perhaps i should outline this idea more fully. Anyone like to comment?

 

cheers,

tim

[bkellum]

Hey Tim,

I think the Simple Template System does just that. It works great for designers who do not want to mess with the PHP code but is robust enought to allow PHP code in the template, your choice. You can use popular editors such as FrontPage, Expression, Dreamweaver to do your edits.

One template can be used for all pages or you can specify a template for a specific page, category, product, infoboxes, etc all the way to even creating a template for the product popup image. You can use the skills you already have such as Flash, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, etc to create your templates.

You can find it here:

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1524

[timbodrumbo]

Hi. Thanks for that. I'm very new to this and template management is key. :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

 

Any thoughts on the integrating osCommerce into other systems or if there are any efforts. (I know some have hacked it into submission, but I'm thinking API or tags on the OScommerce side).

 

Hey Tim,

I think the Simple Template System does just that. It works great for designers who do not want to mess with the PHP code but is robust enought to allow PHP code in the template, your choice. You can use popular editors such as FrontPage, Expression, Dreamweaver to do your edits.

One template can be used for all pages or you can specify a template for a specific page, category, product, infoboxes, etc all the way to even creating a template for the product popup image. You can use the skills you already have such as Flash, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, etc to create your templates.

You can find it here:

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1524

[timbodrumbo]

couldn't find anything in the forums--any idea what happened when any of the Use STS (true/false) dialogs refuse my setting of True and always show false after updating? File perms look ok and consistently i cannot enable STS for any. I cannot see any template choices either. Set the folder to "full" (changed it from "test").

 

?

(thanks)

 

 

 

Hi. Thanks for that. I'm very new to this and template management is key. :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

 

Any thoughts on the integrating osCommerce into other systems or if there are any efforts. (I know some have hacked it into submission, but I'm thinking API or tags on the OScommerce side).

[bkellum]

couldn't find anything in the forums--any idea what happened when any of the Use STS (true/false) dialogs refuse my setting of True and always show false after updating? File perms look ok and consistently i cannot enable STS for any. I cannot see any template choices either. Set the folder to "full" (changed it from "test").

 

?

(thanks)

Hello Tim...first off I need to point you to the correct forum for asking STS questions:

http://www.oscommerce.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=204381

In the forum, you will find that this is a known problem with the most recent version of oscommerce 060817. It does not have anything to do with STS.

However, becuase the module section directly affects STS users, I have uploaded a fix in the STS contribution download site. Please apply the following fix to your site and the problem will be solved:

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1524

(osC MS2 060817 Module Patch for STSv4.2 & 4.3 )