Recently, Devellion released CubeCart V5 beta 4. This built on the third beta, which introduced a new template system - something that we have long been lobbying for. Whilst CC5 is still in the early phase of its development, we have already begun crafting our next skin. In fact, planning and drafting commenced in early January 2010. The main part of the design has been finalized. We now need your suggestions...
What's so great about CubeCart V5
In previous releases, skins were mostly comprised of static assets. That is to say that the template files were pure XHTML & CSS. Any dynamics were achieved using JavaScript. Interactions (through extensions) with the CubeCart core was achieved using a complicated system of JavaScript and PHP files, where the output of a PHP file was loaded in through AJAX. In some cases, such as with the AJAX shopping cart, this was a logical development path. It made perfect sense. However, this is not a viable option for implementing small additions such as table zebra-striping, conditional content and general enhancements.
Such additions were implemented through modifications to CubeCart's core PHP files. This made updating CubeCart a long, tedious and rather complex process. CubeCart V5 tackles this problem on two fronts:
- Code Hooks (that's plug-ins to me and you)
- PHP template files
These two "features" allow us to implement enhancements in a way that was just not possible previously.
Have your say...
As always, we will be forging a number of nifty enhancements into our skins. We hope to include some of the old favorites (AJAX Add To Cart, Speed Optimization etc.), along with a number of additional tools/features:
- Dynamic Search Suggestion
- Color Theme Builder (more on this later)
- AJAX Pagination & Sorting
- Flexible Product Grids (more on this later)
- Super Category Navigation
- Content Slideshows
We are also considering dropping IE6 support. Do you think that this is a bad idea? Do you have any feedback, suggestions or recommendations for us? Please do let us know your thoughts by posting a comment below or opening a support ticket through our Help Desk.
Sounds good to me. I’m new to CubeCart and only have a test shop with CubeCart5 installed. Petty i did not realize the use of CubeCart before. Your CubeCart4 templates looks very good and have reasonable prizes too.
I’m looking forward for your CubeCart5 templates and will definitely buy one when you release them!
Nice to see the html markup has finally been addressed as it’s always been very poorly written so this is an improvement.
The “Nota” theme is awful though, that really shouldn’t see the light of day!
J.
Thanks for the input guys. The theme we are developing is 100% custom code. All the template files have/will be completely rewritten.
Just an update:
The Color Theme Builder (named Color Wheel) is essentially finished and has worked out much better than expected. It allows the user to customize the color theme through the administration interface.
Methods, such as darken, lighten and overlay allow for generation of suitable borders and related elements. Helper methods, such as text_color and text_shadow automatically generate suitable text colors and shadows (as their names suggest) from background colors.
This is best demonstrated through a preview:
– BEFORE: http://twitpic.com/1wuivw/full
– CHANGE: http://twitpic.com/1wujbz/full
– AFTER: http://twitpic.com/1wujfa/full
You can see that the borders, text colors, shadows and drop-down elements etc. are all handled through a single change in Color Wheel. The only image used, which is visible in the preview images, is the small magnifying glass icon.
We’ve also made it possible for designers to easily define new colors through the skin’s configuration file. The color can then be set through the Color Wheel interface and is accessible through all of the stylesheets.
What do you think?
Wonderful!!! Well done Homar. You’ve got us all at CC very excited.
Thanks Al. It has really worked out well.
For those interested, here is a full list of the color methods that we have implemented thus far:
- hex_to_rgb
- luminosity_contrast (calculates contrast between two colors)
- highest_contrast (finds which of two colors has the highest contrast)
- lowest_contrast
- brightness (evaluates the brightness of a color)
- lighter (determines which of two colors is the lightest)
- darker
- text_shadow (intelligently creates bevel or emboss effect)
- text_color (intelligently selects a suitable text color through contrast)
- lighten (lightens a color)
- darken
- overlay (nice blending mode which overlays one color with another)
Most of these methods take optional arguments such as factor. As an example:
– overlay($color, $overlay, $factor) – where:
~ $color is the color to perform the operation on
~ $overlay is the color to overlay
~ $factor is the percentage by which to apply the overlay
This is clearly going to be a powerful tool for any designer/developer working with CubeCart. We welcome any suggestions for further methods.
In the preview images, you can also see our “Super Menu”. This takes the standard category tree markup and cleverly arranges the sibling links. The end result is a brilliant, dynamically generated, “Mega Menu”. No customized HTML markup through PHP or other means. Just pure JS & CSS goodness.
The Grid and AJAX Cart plugins are also nearing completion.