HI,

I inherited a website for someone recently because her previous webmaster has been quite ineffective and practically dropped her in communications.

The client is running 6.2 B2B.

She's using the original template. Dull gray and white look and feel. She wanted to update the site and make some more changes. Well, I went and looked for CRE Loaded templates (and there are plenty), and was still underwhelmed with the HTML/CSS coding.

Why oh why, in the year 2009, is CRE Loaded and many other sites using nested tables within nested tables within nested tables? This is so 1997.

What happened to the new way of templateing? CSS/HTML/Javascript. It's so difficult to update a site when you see <font size=3 color=red>Specials!</font>. Why not, <span class="specialFont">Specials!</span>? Know how easy this is to manipulate in CSS? with the old <font> tag, I have to go to each occurrence of the tag and make the change... :::SHIVER:::

What happened to the use of the <div> tag? I'm all for using the <table> tag but only limited uses..like a grid or a form (which is a grid too at times).

Are there ANY CRE Loaded templates that are more web 2.0 compliant?

web 2.0 doesn't have anything to do with anything

as far as tableless templates.. sure.. a lot of people have done these as custom projects.. but creloaded is based on osc.. which code comes from years old.. it requires a lot of cleaning up to remove the table heavy template/page structure (not just in the template files).. you also have to rebuild the way infoboxes and mainpage modules are built.. essentially editing well over 300 files.. which is why it is a SLOW process (its a lot easier when building a new solution from the ground up)

also, when you switch to a tableless design.. all existing sites/templates become worthless.. which, with the large customer base, turns off more than it would help

You can either hack away the code yourself, hire someone else to do it, or wait for a different version of creloaded to do it for you.. just don't expect your current template to work out well (including product category descriptions which are highly likely to be table based)

But yes in an ideal world.. all sites and browsers would be css compliant and only use tables for what they were designed

Jason,

I don't truly believe, "web 2.0 doesn't have anything to do with anything".
Web 2.0 is all about user interface. How easily you get to thing without alot of page reloads. Quick access to data using ajax calls. Clean easy to find information with large fonts.

The way the current templates of osCommerce/CRELoaded are created are, as you said, very old skool.

I thought with the newer iterations of osCommerce/CRELoaded, the creators would start moving in that direction.

I believe (and this is just my opinion) that carts of this nature that are still holding onto the old skool way of doing things is hindering alot of forward momentum.

Sure it's alot of work to get away from a tableless design, but it's worth it up front.

Of course, this could be a deal that osCommerce/CRELoaded have with 3rd party vendors to keep them in business.

But, in the end, in inheriting a site from a previous webmaster who dropped the ball on the client, I am just astonished at the amount of code I have to go through to get to what I need to get to. The admin needs to be revamped too

web 2.0 has nothing to do with anything.. its just a name to umbrella anything and everything (no standards and such)

as I had stated.. you can't just do that without having a solution for the 100's of 1000's of sites already using it.. the problem is tables are in more than just the template files

it would need to be done on a new release.. and have it known, most of the osc add-ons and ALL 3rd party templates would not work

and until osc releases their newer version which is xml/ruby/javascript/ajax creloaded will not likely rebuild from the ground up.. but keep improving on the existing base.. 6.3 has come a long way from 6.x

its a double edged sword.. (they are holding on to old school for a reason) with the 5k plus add-ons that work with the base code.. to eliminate/require full rewrites on those is not something ANY osc based cart can do cost effectively (over 20,000 files is a lot of re-coding).. but at some point it will happen

In agreement here.

blame osc for not committing to new releases within any 3 year period

its the price paid for open source (in this case non-paid community)

Loony2nz,

Thanks for your comments and for taking the time to share them with us. You do so in hopes that we respond and update the product to make it better.

Indeed we have begun internal development efforts to update the HTML output from endless nested tables to proper div tag and css control.

However we want to remain backward compatible as much as possible. Keep your eyes peeled in this direction for updates and community discussions about proper html and the future of our templating engine.

Sal,

Thank you for responding (and love the sig).
I do hope you do make the leap to a significantly less nested table structure for your templates in the near future. I'm sure I speak for alot of the 3rd party code modifiers that this is a welcomed change. Would make future updates and changes that less troublesome.

And I do understand the need for backward compatibility. It would seem that this is going to be a long process. Weening people off the old skool way to the new skool way.

keep up the good work!

thanks for your optimistic response.

if you like, I invite you to submit your template changes to the community so we can move in step together.