Prices in Tabular Format

[fourone]

Hello,

I'm jumping the gun at the moment but I would eventually like to display the prices for one of my products in a table. The best example I have seen to show you is on a print site I saw: http://www.solopress.com/leaflet-printing/leaflets.html

Is this possible to do in Actinic? If so, can anyone point me in the right direction as to where I can find out how to do this?

Many thanks.

[stualk]

It is possible Tim. Have you ever edited or created layouts in Actinic before? Do you intend for your pricing tables to have a common layout? (i.e. same number of columns each time etc)

[fourone]

Thanks for getting back to me Stuart. Not I haven't got as far as creating any of my own layouts in Actinic yet. At the moment I've just imported in my main site layout from dreamweaver and have added all the actinic elements. I'm just starting to try adding products now.

In answer to your other question, I think the tables would be different for each product, as in the the number of rows/columns will be different for each product

[stualk]

Ok, take a look at some of the products on my website as they have pricing tables above or below the product info and I find this really simple to do. It was just a case of creating a new layout for this and then simply using that layout each time I add a new item.

Do you want me to supply the you with the coding and instructions for this:

http://www.stupidtuesday.co.uk/acatalog/Sandfield.html

[fourone]

Wow thanks Stuart that would be great. I think my main problem is going to be making the prices in the table links so when they are clicked on, the item is then added to the cart.

[stualk]

Ok, no probs. My standard 7-column price table code is below. Here's what you need to do:

1) In Actinic go to the menu at the top and select 'Design' and 'Library'
2) In the layouts tab click the + sign beside 'Fragments' to expand the menu
3) Right click on 'Text Only' and then select 'New Layout'
4) Change the name to something like 'Pricing Table 7 columns' and then click 'OK'
5) Now your new layout will be in the list of fragment layouts so double-click on it to bring up the layout code.
6) I would delete all of the code and replace with the following code:

<actinic:block php="true">
	unset ($sTextArea);
	unset ($txtLines);
	$sTextArea = "<actinic:variable formatting="font(Size|12)" encoding="actinic" name="FragmentText" />";
	$re = "<br />";
	$re1 = "&#126;";
	$txtLines = explode($re, $sTextArea);
	echo "<br><table cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' class='Specification' align='left'>";
	echo "<tr height='19'><td width='8' background='topLeftCorner.gif'></td>";
	echo "<td background='topBar.gif' colspan='8'><font color='red'><b>PRICE GUIDE (inc. one-colour print)</b></font></td>";
	echo "<td width='9' background='topRightCorner.gif'></td></tr>";
	
	for ($i = 0; $i < count($txtLines); $i++){
		echo "<tr valign='top'class='band" . ($i %2) ."'>";
		$cells = explode($re1, $txtLines[$i]);
		echo "<td>&nbsp;</td><td width='75'><font size='2'>$cells[0]</font></td><td width='75'><font size='2'>$cells[1]</font></td><td width='75'><font size='2'>$cells[2]</font></td><td width='75'><font size='2'>$cells[3]</font></td><td width='75'><font size='2'>$cells[4]</font></td><td width='75'><font size='2'>$cells[5]</font></td><td width='75'><font size='2'>$cells[6]</font></td>";
		echo "</tr>";
		}
	echo "<tr height='35'><td colspan='10'><font size='2'>&nbsp;</font></td></tr>";
	echo "</table><br>";
	</actinic:block>

7) Select Apply and then go back to your Actinic catalog.
8) To apply the pricing table to a particular product you need to add a new fragment above or beneath the product.
9) Once you've added the fragment you need to click on the Layouts tab for that fragment and change the fragment layout to the one you've just created.
10) Then, the actual contents of your fragment should be what you'd like to appear in the columns but the column separators should be this squiggle ~ and to move to the next row simply click the return key and start a new row. Note that you can't leave any columns blank so just put a blank space between two squiggles if that's the case (how very technical!!)

In the example I listed to you above this is how my fragment text looks:

QTY~108+~250+~500+~1000+~2000+~!!5000+
Price:~£2.40~£1.60~£1.36~£1.30~£1.26~£1.17

As far as the images surrounding the table go, you can pinch mine if you like. Just right click on them via my site and save them to your site root folder. There should be three in total.

Hope this helps!

[fergusw]

Tim,
It can be done in many ways. We implemented a version for a client that is tied into stock control i.e. not allowing anyone to buy an item that is out of stock.
See here: [*attractive women in lingerie warning]

This is dynamically created in Actinic based on attributes and components. A lot of modding (a rebuld of attrubutes and choices actually) but possible none-the-less.

Stuart,
on a different note, I had been hunting for some logo printed mugs recently and was looking for an Actinic site that provided them - glad I happened upon your post and clicked the link

[fourone]

That's great Stuart, thanks so much for your time in putting that all together for me. I'm going to have a try building something similar and will let you know how I get on. Thanks again.

[fourone]

Thanks for your post Fergus, that is more or less exactly the kind of thing I am trying to create. I'm not sure quite how one goes about it but it's good to know these things are possible!

[fergusw]

Tim,
I would post the method on the forum but it would be too lengthy and fraught with issues in setup etc.
The man hours and development time that went into this implementation in Actinic means that we would only really support this as paid-for modification work.
I really just wanted to show you what *could* be done in Actinic.

We ended up almost re-writing Actinic component, attribute, choice and association code using inbuilt PHP rather than Actinic's own methods for generating choices on product pages, but it works.

Feel free to drop me a PM if you want more info on how we went about this, otherwise I'd recommend Stuart's approach that he has kindly outlined above.