Actually,i'm the designer and the developer, I bend the actinic monster to our whims and a dedicated team inputs the product data and makes sure it all the shop is data plentiful.
ok, well, thanks to all your inputs, i'v upgraded the table, and now:
- entire rows now navigate to the product
- dropdowns automatically affect the list when used
- bottom corner is cut
- z order problems fixed on as many platforms as i could
- next and back buttons no longer annoyingly snap the page to top.
How full is the Actinic Swear Box
actually, very little actinic was used. only a fragment to insert the block.
your fancy deal finder thingie is showing prices without the 2 decimal places.. so it's showing £29.9 instead of £29.90. Obviously not just this page but this is the one I spotted it on.
I've spent far too much time eyeing stuff up on there now.. I really must do something constructive!
Goat Point to Gabriel, outstanding work fella. I've said before in amongst all the wootism's and iffy taste in sounds this dude's got some serious potential to give re boofing up the standard kit.
here is a little 'how it was done', bearing in mind that i cant sick out the code, since its fairly complex, with about a dozens of files involved with even the simplest part of it. but i can explain the general concept, for anyone who wants to give it a go.
first of all, the data comes from a mysql database. the database is populated by a piece of software i wrote in vb.net. all it does is extract the data on products from the catalog, and send it to a table, in a mysql database online. this app runs all the time, is timed and automatic.
this is so that, a small 'table only' piece of php connects to the data, and shows them, with divs and classes, for css styling later.
in the actinic page, a holding div is made in the template. its empty, and has a name only. this is a palceholder, so that when the page loads, javascript calls ajax to call the php mentioned above and put it into the empty div.
buttons on the outsode of the ajax called php page, re-summon the php, with different parameters passed into it. these are the next and back buttons for example.
the overall effect is that i can display infinite pages of items in the div, without page speed or server impact, becasue each time a button is clicked to get more data, the data is loaded in segments. only small portions of the data from the sql is loaded into the div at a time. the speed of ajax gives the illusion that the data was allready in the page and sorted by javascript alone.
2 things of note (just design niggles) circled on the below .gif
the drop-shadows (if that's what they are) on the right hand boxes don't go all the way to the top on most of the boxes (cart summary is fine - others are short)
The page seems to be slightly wider than 100%...? i get a horizontal scroll bar - whether the browser is full screen or not. XP Pro & IE 7.0.5730.11
I only mention this as it's one of the best looking actinic sites i've seen!
And I'm an ex-design consultancy employee and unfortunately can't help but notice little things like these whenever I look over a site that's been well designed. I don't bother if it looks crap
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