Sneak Peek: OpenCart 1.5.0 *ALPHA*

How do layouts work?

Do you manually have to add modules to each layout? Or you can set for the default module and only create other layouts as exceptions by copying default and then these can be edited (e.g. modules added or removed)?

Once again, my age old question :
Mega menus are great but not for everyone. Will there be a (easy) way to have the conventional collapsing tree left menu?

Well I think the mega menu needs to be made into a separate module to be enabled/disabled
The category side module should still be there

Chones wrote:From a usability point of view I think the mega dropdowns aren't intuitive. In the demo the top level sub-categories with no sub-sub-categories are listed under the "Browse" link, then top level sub-categories with sub-sub-categories are listed alongside. This makes them look like a different type of category from those without sub-categories.

I think top-level sub-categories should be listed horizontally - no need for a "Browse" link as the top-level navigation takes you there anyway.

I don't much like the design of the new mega-dropdowns on the Habitat site, but they do get the category > sub-category > sub-sub-category thing right:
http://www.habitat.co.uk/

I am loving the fact that products are laid out using divs rather than an un-semantic table though - good work.

Yea I like the one on www.target.com and www.walmart.com better.... maybe with some more styling it can look better

I don't like the drop down from the top menus to use when online shopping myself - but they are the trend with the big stores so to be able to look like an up-to-date retailer is really good. If there are different menu styles to choose from in 1.5 then that will be fantastic.

Qphoria wrote:Well I think the mega menu needs to be made into a separate module to be enabled/disabled
The category side module should still be there

Outstanding!

Looks great, superb work

Will the option be there to set category menu top, side or both? as I know some stores have alot of categories.

Qphoria wrote:Ah I was wrong.. the options are able to show on the catalog:
http://unbannable.com/dev150/index.php? ... duct_id=42

Never noticed that working before, tho its still not fully functional

Great, some joker is deleting the content "Product not found!".

LOL maybe I give this community too much credit as a civil entity. I will have to reimport the database and treat you all like little kids and take away your privileges

Qphoria wrote:LOL maybe I give this community too much credit as a civil entity. I will have to reimport the database and treat you all like little kids and take away your privileges

This is probably why Qphoria has the avatar he does.

Qphoria wrote:LOL maybe I give this community too much credit as a civil entity. I will have to reimport the database and treat you all like little kids and take away your privileges

If you do decide to reload the database can you check whether the oc_voucher_description table is there, the admin - gift voucher option is saying this table is missing, thanks.

Gonna have to run a update sql script for the children.
You the type that redoes the database every hour or so.

What's up with all the "looks" as in template/theme questions? Does it really since you should re-theme it anyway?

@ MVC framework
Since everybody is all concerned about add-on functionality or how the menu needs work ... I'll be the otaku.

Are there any changes or major changes in the core framework?
(No, not the catalog side since we know a bit about that already ... url, zones ...)

Looking for things that can be done DRY and moved to a class since you see the stuff being repeated repeatedly.
ie, buttons, template location checking, etc ...

Looking good. Not sure about the 'Design' section being under 'System' (I think it should be its own root level menu) and there are a few other oddities, but overall it appears to be a drastic improvement.

For those not sure about mega drop-downs, Jakob Nielsen, THE usability guru, gives them his seal of approval, and thinks they are much better than drop-down menus:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mega-dropdown-menus.html

However, they have to be done correctly:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mega-menus-wrong.html

Whooo--oo very nice! Useful functions, classy appearance...love the list view.
No wonder it's taking a while to code, it's pretty ambitious to my eyes. Thanks for the sneaky peek

Thanks For The New Version,
i have test the insert order,seems little complex

I'm astonished by how massive this revision is.

I'm not sure I like the categories across the top in the gray bar, but I can work with it. What happens if a merchant has 3 major categories, or has 12 major categories? Either that bar will look mostly empty, or it will be too crowded.

On the product page, I don't like that the categories to the left are not there. Is that something that's controllable by an option in admin?

I also don't like that the 2nd, 3rd pictures, etc., can now be seen only in a pop-up window and not in their own tab.

I'll have more comments as I digest what I'm seeing. One thing I can say is that the cart now looks more "standard" -- i.e., more like what you will find on other sites, especially the big commercial sites. I suppose that's a good thing.

I don't take change well, but I must say that I'm impressed that the developers are working so hard to improve this program. I expected something much more incremental. Frankly, I think this revision should be named version 2 and not 1.5.

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Okay, here's something additional:

On the product page, can the merchant control the information that is given at the top of the page? For example:

Brand: Hewlett-Packard
Product Code: Product 21
Reward Points: 0
Availability: In Stock

My products don't have brands; I don't use reward points; and I want the customer to know how many items remain in stock. Can I customize this information?

Also, I don't need the Delivery information right below.

For those not sure about mega drop-downs...

I, for one, cannot stand drop down menus. They may look nice, but anything that covers up information on a page, unless it is specifically clicked on, is a bad idea. I hate it when I'm browsing a site and accidentally move my mouse over one of those menus and something else pops over what I'm looking at! ("What??? Who said I wanted to see what was under that menu???)

Simply because "everyone" is doing it doesn't make it a good idea. Remember when everyone got a printer and started using 10 different fonts on a page? Bad idea.

In my opinion, I really hope this trend dies quickly. Unfortunately, I'm probably in the minority.

BTW, I'm not saying that I think it should be removed from 1.5. I'm just expressing my overall dissatisfaction with this trend across the web.

I, for one, cannot stand drop down menus. They may look nice, but anything that covers up information on a page, unless it is specifically clicked on, is a bad idea. I hate it when I'm browsing a site and accidentally move my mouse over one of those menus and something else pops over what I'm looking at! ("What??? Who said I wanted to see what was under that menu???)

Simply because "everyone" is doing it doesn't make it a good idea. Remember when everyone got a printer and started using 10 different fonts on a page? Bad idea.

In my opinion, I really hope this trend dies quickly. Unfortunately, I'm probably in the minority.

BTW, I'm not saying that I think it should be removed from 1.5. I'm just expressing my overall dissatisfaction with this trend across the web.

I'd like to echo these sentiments. Drop-down menus that drop down automatically when the cursor passes over them can be very frustrating. A page visitor should not have to worry about where he is moving his cursor. If you are going to keep the drop-down menus, then please make them activated by a click.

Purebeads wrote:I'm not sure I like the categories across the top in the gray bar, but I can work with it. What happens if a merchant has 3 major categories, or has 12 major categories? Either that bar will look mostly empty, or it will be too crowded.

I completely agree. A vertical menu is better due to the unknown number of items that will appear. I see it as a waste of screen real estate given that there are two rows in the menu now, when only one is really required.

Purebeads wrote:I also don't like that the 2nd, 3rd pictures, etc., can now be seen only in a pop-up window and not in their own tab.

I've never been a fan of the image display on OpenCart. I think there should be one large image to the left (as there is now), then a column of small thumbnails to the right of that. When hovering over a thumbnail, it immediately displays that image in the larger area. Clicking on any image should open something better than thickbox (e.g. a lightbox with an image gallery).

On the admin side, rather than choosing the 'main' image and then using the 'Image' tab to add others, I think all images should be added from the one tab ('Images') and then the user can simply nominate the order in which they are shown, with number '1' being the main image displayed on the front end.

Completely unrelated, I've always hated the menu in use in the admin panel. It's slow and buggy (sometimes submenus don't appear if you've just moved from one menu to another too quickly).