Using CSS-P rather than tables

[evanst58]

I am an Actinic Newbie & have a site created using CSS-P & <div> rather than tables for positioning - mainly for accessibility and forward/backward compatibity & graceful degradation.

Even the most basic themes use tables heavily - has anyone generated a theme that uses CSS-P ?

In actual fact, I just want to add shopping cart functionality to an existing site so really just want the whole cart to sit in its own <div> and I will provide the banners/navigation etc and don't want to be constrained by the Actinic templating system but more just to use the cart as an object.

Am I just being naive or is this all fundamentally impossible ?

[s-j-r]

No, what you suggest is completely possible.

You just need to establish when you will need to interface to Actinic stuff and what the interface links should each look like.

I have done just this on http://www.oobli.com , a sex toys shop, where I use Actinic for shopping cart, searching and checkout but otherwise build the catalogue pages myself. I also build an Actinic product import file to load up the products for Actinic. For interface simplicity I put these all in a single section.

Steve

[evanst58]

Very &quot;clean&quot; site

Steve - well done, many thanks for the inspiration that I can acheive what I want & for the many ideas for Xmas presents

That's exactly the look and style I want to create albeit for a completely different product range.

Did you start from scratch or modify one of the clean layout templates ? Or just put the shopping cart functionality into a positioned region ?

[s-j-r]

Tom,

I don't use the Actinic templates at all. I keep "my" html in a separate directory on my PC from the Actinic stuff.

I use Frontpage for inspiration and HTML formulation (and FTP) but I actually auto-build all of my HTML out of a (rather large) Excel macro that gets its input from a "Products" spreadsheet.

That way the product portfolio can be fairly dynamic - making Special offers etc. fairly easy to manage, just by altering the spreadsheet and then re-running the "generate" macro. I spin an Actinic product export file out, so that new products getting added (or old ones deleted) quickly get reflected in both the site HTML and the Actinic Product data base.

Hey...... it works for me...... at least I hope it will ...... or the owner won't pay me

Steve

[evanst58]

Sounds great

Sounds like what I need, where are you based - perhaps we could engage your services too - email me off-forum direct at tom@sheresolutions.com perhaps