Re Beta V2014

[chris ashdown]

Does the responsive designs (3) in this Beta mean That SellerDeck has changed it's mind and is including them free when the new version is released?

[Duncan Rounding]

I understand the three included will also be in the production release.

[PeterW]

Do you think they will tell the people about to purchase their Basic Responsive Design Implementation?

[malbro]

Do you think they will tell the people about to purchase their Basic Responsive Design Implementation?

There is a difference between updating an existing site which is what they charge you for and building the site yourself from scratch using the free designs that are included, you can import the new snapshots onto your site but you will then have a lot of work to do to get the site to a close match to your existing design.

[saucysal]

Tried Responsive Design

I tried out the responsive design, out of the box, link that Jonty helpfully put on here (in Any Other Business), viewing the page on my very large desktop screen, my tablet, and a mobile phone, and got the opinion of one other. As making use of the responsive design would involve a lot of extra work in putting back all the changes that I had made to my current site design (several weeks' work) and weighing up any possible advantage, decided not worth the extra time and effort. In fact it was not apparent to us that it was an advantage at all. It is only on a mobile phone that there is an obvious difference, but being able (currently) to see the whole page by scrolling, and being able to enlarge to see parts when required, which people are now used to doing, seems to me better than just seeing a page without scrolling, but with very limited links, images, information, etc. It may suit some sites, but not ours.

Sarah

[peblaco]

It is good news responsive themes will be included by default. However some people may be confused. I was asked by people with custom designs about making their website work on mobiles by purchasing a plugin or waiting for the next software version. I don't think they understood the work that would be involved. For a design to be responsive they either have to remove their custom design and start from scratch with one of the new default responsive themes, or have work done on their website to convert the custom design to be responsive, which depending on how detailed the design is may take a while to do. I hope the SellerDeck sales team takes this into consideration that if someone with a custom design enquires about upgrading that the process is explained.

[Buzby]

Having tested the Smart responsive theme I didn't think it really worked on my iphone.

When you select something from the menu, or do a search the content is then displayed at the bottom of the page which is not in the viewing area of the screen.

It was a few attempts that before I scrolled down, and had assumed it wasn't working correctly. I wonder how many would just click the back button.

I feel if you click one button on the menu then the content should open up directly underneath, pushing the rest of the menu down the page.

[peblaco]

There are similar issues on the checkout due to the amount of information shown at the top before the invoice address forms which could be confusing, if coming from the cart to checkout it looks like the cart again, I raised the issue earlier in the year when previewing the first responsive theme, I've been told it is an area they are still working on but will be raising it as another query.

[jont]

I don't think they understood the work that would be involved. For a design to be responsive they either have to remove their custom design and start from scratch with one of the new default responsive themes, or have work done on their website to convert the custom design to be responsive, which depending on how detailed the design is may take a while to do.

This has always been the case when upgrading or switching themes on modified sites - something will always break and need resetting to get the site back to where it was. With inbuilt responsive themes this is going to exponentially increase the changes done.

SellerDeck upgrader will rightly have to reset a lot of layouts back to factory default to ensure they work - this will inevitably blitz and modifications done.

Personally I think for highly modified sites the best route is to make the existing design responsive (with the chance of a redesign at the same time) rather than apply the inbuilt responsive themes and retrospectively hack that back. Hacking the supplied theme will always be a compromise and I think more time consuming having to work out someone elses work and logic and may lead to restrictions on creativity.

[MDN]

There are similar issues on the checkout due to the amount of information shown at the top before the invoice address forms which could be confusing, if coming from the cart to checkout it looks like the cart again, I raised the issue earlier in the year when previewing the first responsive theme, I've been told it is an area they are still working on but will be raising it as another query.

I used a bit of a tweak on the forum to set the cart to hide the contents by default to bring the address fields up for that reason, this to be fair does sort the problem there.

Upgrading my pre built theme still had a lot of issues, so moving to responsive is never going to be a smooth process. Best approach for anyone would be an import of products into a clean install rather than trying to upgrade, even then a lot more thought needs to go into structure and extra layouts etc

[kipper]

Integrated Shipping in v2014

"Implementing shipping management requires a GFS contract, which your SellerDeck account manager can arrange for you. As part of the account setup, you will need the GFS Selector software installed on an IIS server on your local network."

Honestly is this the best they could come up with. Doesn't look like i'm upgrading this year. It didn't take much to make my site responsive by copying some of the css styles from the examples.

[jont]

Honestly is this the best they could come up with.

I firmly believe they must be holding back the headline features for the launch version ... Earls Court ... smoke machines ... lasers ..... Rolling Stones playing live ...... TADAA ..... this is what you are really getting ............ I have my tent already pitched for a stage side position (if someone could bring me a coffee please it is freezing and I am not giving up my spot to anyone)