I am new to Cs-Cart, I am trying to learn how to take one of my CSS/HTML designs and turn it into a Cs-Cart skin. Does anybody know of a tutorial on this or any advise for me? Do you take an existing skin and change it directly on the css and tpl or do you work just with hooks? I want to fully customize it. So any steps or help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Alyssa
Most skins utilize a core set of functionality from the cart including ajax methods, javascript, jquery stuff and functional (not display) templates.
Hence it’s generally easiest (and safest for the future) to take a standard template that has a layout as close to your needs as possible and then to modify it to suit. The majoritiy of templates are really more functional than UI oriented. You want to use there wherever possible. Pay close attention to common_templates/product_data.tpl. You might want to enclose that whole template in your own hook… Just a hint.
I personally would use hooks for everything so my changes are upgrade independent. If hooks don’t exist for what I want to do, I would add them. Much easier to add a hook back after an upgrade than to integrate a bunch of template code.
Your css should also be specific to your changes, not modifying the standard files but to hook your own stylesheet in after the standard ones.
Just my opinion…
What if i have a fully different design from standard skin? No css or layout would be used from standard skin.
Should i use standard skin anyway for template?
Or it is better to start to write skin from beginning and use some code parts from standard skin where the're need?
Thank you.
Hi there,
what I do is starting always with basic Skin. Its the most clean in terms of css. I then alter all positions and design according to my will.
Its much easier than start from scratch.
And by reading for version 3, I think using hooks is a waste of time, as the v2 design wont be comptible to v3 at all.
Fotis