Hybrid Forge » eCommerce Software http://www.hybridforge.com/blog eCommerce Consultants Fri, 04 Jun 2010 21:41:35 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 Tweaking the Interprise Suite eCommerce Minicart Display http://www.hybridforge.com/blog/404/web-design/interprise-suite-ecommerce-minicart/ http://www.hybridforge.com/blog/404/web-design/interprise-suite-ecommerce-minicart/#comments Thu, 04 Jun 2009 23:57:47 +0000 Rod Miles http://www.hybridforge.com/blog/?p=404 Visitors to your eCommerce website will enjoy seeing a ‘mini cart’ while they shop around. A minicart is a smaller, stripped down version of their full shopping cart, typically placed on side panels or inside website headers. As a web designer, I am happy to take advantage of the Interprise Suite eCommerce (ISE) Skin Tokens for displaying a minicart inside my custom design skins [i.e., (!MINICART!) ]. But, I like to make some modifications to the default minicart display and I believe you might too.

There are a few CSS and Javascript workarounds I’ll discuss to get around having to edit any C#, because the minicart markup is generated directly by the ISE code-behind, and is not easily accessible without the need to recompile your code-base.

Notes on this example: I assume the reader to have an intermediate skill level for writing valid CSS and also manipulating HTML elements (DOM) with Javascript. In my example, I have used JQuery to traverse, manipulate, and edit some elements because it works great, it’s feature-rich, and appears to have no conflicts with ISE core Javascript libraries. You can use whichever Javascript package you prefer. You may also want to refer to a previous post: Creating Custom Design Skins for Interprise Suite.

The Generated ISE Minicart HTML Markup

By default, the minicart HTML generated by the ISE code-behind comes out looking like this:

  1. <table width=”150″ cellpadding=”0″ cellspacing=”0″ border=”0″>
  2. <tr><td align=”left” valign=”top”>
  3. <img src=”skins/Skin_1/images/minicart.gif” border=”0″><br>
  4. <table width=”190″ cellpadding=”4″ cellspacing=”0″
    border=”0″ style=”border: 1px solid #444444;”>
  5. <tr><td align=”center” valign=”top”>
  6. <a href=”p-1-product-abc.aspx”>Product ABC</a>
  7. <br>Qty 1&nbsp;$ 5.00<br/><br/>
  8. <a href=”p-2-product-xyz.aspx”>Product XYZ</a>
  9. <br>Qty 1&nbsp;$ 5.00<br/><br/>
  10. Sub Total: $ 10.00<br/><br/>
  11. <a href=”ShoppingCart.aspx”>
  12. <font color=”BLUE”><b>CHECKOUT</b></font></a>
  13. </td></tr>
  14. </table>
  15. </td></tr>
  16. </table>

And here’s how it ends up looking by default – not ugly, but a tad unattractive, in my opinion:

ISE Default Minicart

First the problems, besides the obvious markup errors like mixing “<br/>” with “<br>”:

  • We can’t easily make changes to the HTML because it is derived from the C# code-behind;
  • The output is in a table, not horrible, but the “align=center” on the table cell will need to be looked at; I like this kind of output to be aligned left or right;
  • The “<FONT>” tag… my, oh my; But it will be useful for us, see below;
  • There’s no ID or class associated with the minicart for targeting it with CSS;
  • When the shopping cart is empty, the minicart doesn’t show anything – no nothing. This may or may not be what you want but in my case, i’d like it to show “Your Shopping Cart is Empty” when there’s nothing there.

Implementing the Interprise Suite Minicart Tweaks

First, you’re going to want to put your minicart Skin Token inside a wrapper in your template files so you can properly target it with CSS:

  1. <div id=”miniCart”>(!MINICART!)</div>

Here is my snippet of CSS that targets the minicart. Granted, i’m using that <FONT> tag in a way that probably wasn’t imagined originally, however it allows me to do what I need in modern browsers.

  1. /* Mini Cart CSS */
  2. #miniCart table { line-height:1.1em; }
  3. #miniCart table tr td img, #miniCart table tr td br,
    #miniCart table table td a font b { display:none; }
  4. #miniCart table table tr td br { display:inline; }
  5. #miniCart table table td { padding-bottom: 5px; }
  6. #miniCart table table td a font { float:right;
    display:block; width:112px; height:22px;
    background:url(‘../images/button-checkout.gif’) no-repeat 0 0;
    cursor:pointer; }
  7. #miniCart table table td a font:hover
    { /* roll-over sprite background-position */}

Because the table cell align=”center” and table border are both inline, I can’t override it with CSS. So, i’m going to use JQuery. And i’m also going to use JQuery to add some text to the ISE mini-cart when the cart is empty. So, first you’ll need to ensure you include the JQuery libraries in the <head> of your ISE template file:

  1. <head>
  2. <script src="/skins/Skin_(!SKINID!)/js/jquery-1.3.2.js"
    type="text/javascript"></script>
  3. . . .
  4. </head>

Then, you can use the following Javascript to target the minicart:

  1. /* JQuery Mini-cart Update */
  2. $(document).ready(function () {
  3. $(“#miniCart table table”).css({‘border-width’ : ‘0′});
  4. $(“#miniCart table table td”).attr({align : ‘left’});
  5. if ($(“#miniCart”).text() == “”) {
  6. $(“#miniCart”).append(“<p>Your Shopping Cart is Empty.</p>”);
  7. };
  8. }

You’ll have to create your own button image (and rollover sprite) for the checkout button. But with a little extra CSS tweaking (like adding an background image to the miniCart div) my minicart now looks something like this and works just great!

ISE Custom Minicart

You can download my minicart CSS and my minicart Javascript, but please review it for compliance with your specific version of Interprise Suite. This was written for ISE 5.3.

For more information on customizing Interprise Suite eCommerce, please feel most welcome to contact the Hybrid Forge design team: info@hybridforge.com.

]]> http://www.hybridforge.com/blog/404/web-design/interprise-suite-ecommerce-minicart/feed/ 0 Creating Custom Design Skins for Interprise Suite eCommerce http://www.hybridforge.com/blog/221/web-design/create-interprise-suite-custom-skin/ http://www.hybridforge.com/blog/221/web-design/create-interprise-suite-custom-skin/#comments Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:25:14 +0000 Rod Miles http://www.hybridforge.com/blog/?p=221 I recently developed another custom eCommerce design skin for one of our Interprise Suite eCommerce (ISE) clients. While I regularly design custom skins for ISE, each time I begin I realize how few online resources are available to help web designers skin the shopping cart side of ISE. So, I decided to walk through an example of creating a custom design with a different home page design/layout then the design/layout of the inner pages of the site.

Notes on this example: I assume the reader to have a web design mockup file ready (e.g., a Photoshop file), and to have an intermediate skill level for writing valid X/HTML markup and CSS. This example also assumes that Interprise Suite is installed and that the website is up and running in your dev environment.

ISE Skin Basics

Some basic Interprise Suite concepts that will make your custom design skin experience go smoothly:

  • You can invoke a different skin through a browser by using the following querystring, where “X” is the unique skin #:
    http://www.my-ecommerce-site.com/?skinid=X
  • All skin templates are located in the following directory, which is where you should put your CSS, images, Javascript, and custom XmlPackage files:
    …/my-ecommerce-site/skins/skin_X/
    …/my-ecommerce-site/skins/skin_X/css/
    …/my-ecommerce-site/skins/skin_X/XmlPackages/
    etc.

    (Note: make a backup copy of “…/skin_1/” you’ll need this later, plus just in case anything goes wrong throughout your customization process and you need to revert.)

  • Learn to love Skin Tokens, you’ll use these a lot. Skin tokens are snippets of text [e.g., (!SKINTOKEN!)] that you can place in your template files for automatically adding specific ISE information to your template. For example, following are the skin tokens I typically use in my templates. Some of the information generated by these tokens can be setup in the ISE client tool:
    • (!METATITLE!) – page title
    • (!METADESCRIPTION!) – page meta description
    • (!METAKEYWORDS!) – page meta keywords
    • (!JAVASCRIPT_INCLUDES!) – required in your template (ISE Javascript libraries)
    • (!PAGEINFO!) – not required, but very useful for generating page instantiation info
    • (!USERNAME!) – by default, this generates “You’re logged in as: XYZ“
    • (!SKINID!) – the current skin id being used, useful for various path-ing requirements
    • (!SIGNINOUT_TEXT!) – by default, switches between “Login” and “Logout” automatically as necessary
    • (!SIGNINOUT_LINK!) – by default, switches between “signin.aspx” and “signout.aspx”
    • (!MINICART!) – generates a “mini shopping cart” to show items currently added to a visitor’s cart

Creating the Interprise Suite Skin Template Files

Now for the good stuff. Web designers have their own personal process for generating the required X/HTML markup and CSS from a design mockup file (like a Photoshop file). I’m not going to suggest any changes to your process, but here is the general process I use for customizing ISE:

My ISE Customization Steps:

  1. Create HTML template files and CSS from a design file. Plus, a couple of quick sanity tests for the design.
  2. Create custom ISE image buttons (used throughout the site).
  3. Wire-up the required ISE components: ASP.net controls, XmlPackages, and Skin Tokens in your template.
  4. Upload your files and change necessary configuration options in the ISE client.
  5. Reset the ISE Web Cache

1. Create HTML Template Files and CSS Stylesheets

So, you have a design mockup already – great! In my example I’ve created a different “home” page layout than the “inner” pages of the site. I’m not going to detail how to cut up your design file – there are lots of great resources online that would do more justice to the topic than I. That said, to follow along, get your design cut up into 2 HTML files with the following structure on your local/testing server:

home template:   …/ise-template/home-template.htm
inner template:   …/ise-template/template.htm
css file(s):    …/ise-template/css/
image file(s):   …/ise-template/images/
javascript file(s):   …/ise-template/js/

For now, don’t worry about getting any of the String Tokens in place. Focus on the HTML and CSS of the template files themselves and perform the following sanity tests on your design:

  • How does font-scaling work +/- 2 font sizes? Does your design hold together?
  • Have you used CSS font-families so that visitors without your fancy “minion pro” font still have a good browsing experience? Just a note, while the infamous “Tahoma” looks great in most Windows environments, in Safari (Windows & Mac) it looks chunky – consider using something more Safari friendly in your font-family.
  • How does your design work in various versions of Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer (IE)? Litmus can help you determine this. And for the various versions of IE, I’ve been using a handy little tool (still in alpha release at the moment my writing) called IE Tester.
  • How does your design look and handle in a mobile browser like Blackberry or IPhone? eCommerce customers shop from all kinds of devices.

2. Create Custom ISE Image Buttons

The buttons i’m referring to are the buttons that come with the default skins included with ISE. For example:

ISE Button 1
ISE Button 2

If you like these buttons, use them. If you don’t, get ready for a little Photoshop fun as (from my last count) there are over 100 different image buttons to customize throughout the website. All these buttons can be placed in your images folder:

…/ise-template/images/

Be sure to name them properly, else ISE won’t be able to find them. First, make a backup of all default skin buttons that come with ISE (check a default skin directory of ISE “../my-ecommerce-site/skin_1/images/”) and copy them wherever you’re checking your design cuts (“…/ise-template/images/”). Then as you create each new button, simply overwrite the same image button file, ensuring the file name stays the same.

3. Wire-up the Required ISE Components

Now that your basic design is tested and the general ISE image buttons are customized, it’s time to hook up your template with ISE. First things first, copy your “template.htm” file and rename it “template.ascx”; and copy your “home-template.htm” file and rename it “home-template.ascx”. These are the required ASP.net extensions for ISE.

Required ASP.net Components for your template:

  1. Take a look at the backup copy of “skin_1″ you made before you started – you did make one, right? Open “skin_1_backup/template.ascx” and copy the first 3 lines of the file into your custom “template.ascx” file. They should begin something like “<%@…” – these are the ASP.net controls and registers.
    1. <%@ Control Language=”c#” AutoEventWireup=. . . %>
    2. <%@ Register TagPrefix=”ComponentArt”. . . %>
    3. <%@ Register TagPrefix=”ise”. . . %>
  2. Just inside your <body> tag, place the following line. This line basically translates into your <form> tag which makes all the ISE whiz-bang magic possible:
    1. <body>
    2. <asp:Panel ID=”pnlForm” runat=”server” Visible=”false”  />
  3. Inside the “content area” of your templates, place the following ASP.net tag. This tag is where “content” items (such as topics, shopping carts, messages, etc.) will be displayed in your template:
    1. <div id=”content”>
    2. <!– ISE Content Area –>
    3. <asp:PlaceHolder ID=”PageContent” runat=”server”>
    4. </asp:PlaceHolder>
    5. . . .
    6. </div>

Instantiate the Skin Tokens Required:

  1. The <head> section of your template files should look something like this:
    1. <head>
    2. <title>(!METATITLE!)</title>
    3. <meta name=”description” content=”(!METADESCRIPTION!)” />
    4. <meta name=”keywords” content=”(!METAKEYWORDS!)” />
    5. <link href=”/skins/Skin_(!SKINID!)/css/default.css”
      rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” media=”screen” />
    6. <meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html;
      charset=utf-8″ />
    7. <script src=”/jscripts/core.js” type=”text/javascript”>
      </script>
    8. (!JAVASCRIPT_INCLUDES!)
    9. </head>
  2. Include the (!PAGEINFO!) token just below the opening <body> tag and before the previously mentioned ASP.net tag:
    1. <body>
    2. (!PAGEINFO!)
    3. <asp:Panel ID=”pnlForm” runat=”server” Visible=”false” />
  3. Include the (!USERNAME!) token wherever your design calls for it, I typically put this information inside the top (or header) section of the design:
    1. <div id=”header”>
    2. <span id=”userName”>(!USERNAME!)</span>
    3. . . .
    4. </div>
  4. Breadcrumbs:
    1. <div id=”breadcrumbs”>(!SECTION_TITLE!)</div>
  5. My Shopping Cart and Login/Logout links:
    1. <a href=”(!SIGNINOUT_LINK!)” id=”topLogin”>
      (!SIGNINOUT_TEXT!)</a>
    2. . . .
    3. <a href=”/shoppingcart.aspx” id=”topCart”>
      My Shopping Cart ((!NUM_CART_ITEMS!))</a>
  6. Mini-cart Display, which I typically use on a side panel.
    1. <div id=”miniCart”>(!MINICART!)</div>

Instantiate your ISE XmlPackages:

  1. Call the Search Box XmlPackage:
    1. <div id=”iseSearchBox”>(!XmlPackage
      Name=”skin.search”!)</div>
  2. If you want to display your shop categories, call the Categories XmlPackage:
    1. <div id=”catListing”>(!XmlPackage
      Name=”rev.categories”!)</div>

There are several other XmlPackages available to you, depending on your needs and the type of eCommerce website you are creating. Check the ISE documentation for more help on this.

You can download my ISE sample template, but please review it for compliance with your specific version of ISE. This one was written for ISE 5.3.

4. Upload your Files & Change ISE Client Configuration Options

Upload your template files (all images, all css, and .ascx files) to the desired skin directory. Typically, I just use Skin_1. Since I’ve already made a back-up of this, there is no harm in having your Skin set as Skin_1 – plus it saves you one step in the ISE client. Overwrite all the existing files with the ones you have created. Leave all the other files there, as-is. There’s no need to mess with them at this point. Now, all your files should now be uploaded to the server in a directory structure similar to this:

…/my-ecommerce-site/skins/skin_1/template.ascx
…/my-ecommerce-site/skins/skin_1/home-template.ascx
…/my-ecommerce-site/skins/skin_1/css/…
…/my-ecommerce-site/skins/skin_1/js/…
…/my-ecommerce-site/skins/skin_1/images/…

Next, open and login into your Interprise Suite client tool. Inside the client, you’ll need to goto the “eCommerce” module (800 eCommerce), and open “Utilities > Setup > Application Configuration”. (In here, make sure if you have multiple websites running, you are working with the correct site.)

Inside the “Application Configuration” select the group name “SITEDISPLAY”. There is an option here called “DefaultSkinID”, make sure this is set to the same Skin_X directory you are using for your skin files. If you are overwriting Skin_1 (as I have suggested) you do not need to change this, typically.

Interprise Suite Default Skin ID

Then, select the group name “SKINS”. There are 2 options here to change. Ensure that “HomeTemplate” is set to the same file name you uploaded to the server (in this example “home-template.ascx”. The “HomeTemplateAsIs” option should be set to “false” if you are allowing users to define content on the home page through the ISE client “Topics” pages. If you set this to value to “true” then ISE will assume that you are providing all content for the home page inside your “home-template.ascx” file itself.

Interprise Suite Default Skin ID

5. Reset the ISE Web Cache

You’ll likely need to reset the ISE web cache for your design to take effect completely. Also, if you make any changes to the template and/or ISE configuration settings you may need to reset it again, so it’s nice to know where to find it in the ISE client tool. One place you can find the “Reset Web Cache” button is under the eCommerce module (800 eCommerce), then select “Tools” > “Web Store”. Once inside the “Web Store” option, at the top of the tool bar you can see the button:

ISE Reset Web Cache

Congratulations – Your ISE Custom Skin Is Now Active!

At this point you should be able to see your custom design skin for Interprise Suite on the front-end of the website. Customizing Interprise Suite eCommerce can be tricky at points, but it’s worth it in the end as ISE is one of the best eBusiness solutions online when you need to manage inventory and provide eCommerce.

I hope i’ve helped you see how you can get around some of the issues of creating a custom ISE skin and that you’ve found this useful. We would love to hear from you if you have other thoughts on the process outlined above. If you have further questions about customizing Interprise Suite we invite you to contact us.

]]> http://www.hybridforge.com/blog/221/web-design/create-interprise-suite-custom-skin/feed/ 2 Interprise Suite Installation Success – A Pre-flight Checklist http://www.hybridforge.com/blog/9/software/interprise-suite-installation-success-a-pre-flight-checklist/ http://www.hybridforge.com/blog/9/software/interprise-suite-installation-success-a-pre-flight-checklist/#comments Tue, 19 May 2009 23:22:49 +0000 Chad Smith http://www.hybridforge.com/blog/?p=9 Interprise Suite is a relative newcomer in the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software marketplace. While the product has been around since 2006, not until recently has it been worthy of implementation within your business. Trust us, we started working with Interprise Suite in the fall of 2007 as the ERP platform for the start-up social enterprise ireturn inc. Like many things in life, first impressions are a very important indicator of future outcomes. In anticipation of the release of Interprise Suite 2009 we thought it was time to publish a handy pre-installation guide to ensure your first out-of-the-box experience is a success.

Drawing on my past experience as an Air Force officer I’ve have put together the Interprise Suite Pre-flight Checklist. As you may or may not be aware each and every time an aircraft leaves the ground there is a rigorous list of items to be checked before the pilot even starts the engines. Ultimately the pilot is responsible for determining the aircraft’s airworthiness before he embarks. As Interprise expands its marketing to offer single-user versions of Interprise Suite installable by virtually anyone, some of its requirements are bound to be overlooked prior to launching the installer. I admit that many of the checks I describe are simple RTFM to the propeller-head crowd, yet we anticipate many a motivated small-business owner who may not be schooled in the black art of aspnet_regiis.exe will want to evaluate the software for themselves.

This checklist makes the basic assumption that you are planning to install both the client and the server for Interprise Suite. To ensure your first flight is a success I present the Hybrid Forge Interprise Suite Pre-Flight Checklist.

Interprise Suite Install Pre-flight Checklist

Operating system

Interprise Suite is supported on the following operating systems: Windows XP Professional, Vista Business, Windows Server 2003 Standard or better, and Windows Server 2008 Standard or better.  Home edition of Windows XP and the lighter versions of Vista do not have the Microsoft web server IIS so avoid those.  Interprise will run on 64-bit versions of Windows but a specific 64-bit  version is not currently available. I’m currently using the release candidate of Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate available through our MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) subscription and its a significant improvement over Vista and even Windows XP for those hold outs.  In a future post I’ll describe our Interprise Suite experiences on Windows 7.

Disk Space

While the official requirement is 10GB for both the client and server, to avoid disk space issues from Microsoft service packs and other maintenance downloads as well as disk space for additional company or demo databases, ensure your machine has at least 20GB of free space.

Internet Information Server (IIS)

Prior to launching the Interprise Suite installer ensure you have Internet Information Server (IIS) installed.  Installing IIS before running the installer will save you from wasting time restarting the installer when it fails to detects IIS.  Be sure to test that IIS is running by starting your favorite web browser and pointing it to http://localhost.  Check whether your firewall is blocking traffic on the standard HTTP port number 80. Be sure to open access to this port to your machine.

Instructions on installing IIS for Vista

.Net Framework 2.0

Ensure that Microsoft’s .Net Framework version 2.0 is installed.  Note that this requirement is only relevant for early versions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 as newer Microsoft operating systems include the framework.

Download the .Net 2.0 Redistributable Package directly from Microsoft

Windows Installer 3.1

The Windows installer is an applications installation and configuration service that facilitates installation packages like Interprise.

Download the Windows Installer 3.1 package

Web Service Enhancements 3.0

In order for the Interprise Suite client to connect to your designated server over the internet you must install the Microsoft Web Service Extensions version 3. The Interprise “smart client” technology relies on web services to communicate with your server.   There are multiple versions available for download from Microsoft and only one is detected by the Interprise installer.  Here is the link to the version Interprise prefers:

Download the Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 3.0 for Microsoft .NET

Microsoft SQL Express 2005

The Interprise Installer will attempt to install Microsoft SQL Express 2005 if it can’t detect a previously installed version of Microsoft SQL Server. Microsoft recently reorganized the SQL Server website to promote the release of SQL Server 2008 and changed the location of the SQL Express 2005 download in the process.  The download is now available at the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 product page.

After checking each of the items on the checklist you are finally cleared to proceed with installation. I hope you enjoy the flight! As Interprise Suite and the software that supports it evolves I will continue to update the checklist. In the short-term I look forward to support for Windows SQL 2008 and Windows 7 and of course the official release of Interprise Suite 2009.

We Speak ‘Interprise Suite’

Interprise Suite is a sophisticated platform for powering your business. At Hybrid Forge we speak Interprise Suite and can help you quickly climb the learning curve on the path to understanding why Interprise Suite is such a compelling choice for your next ERP platform.

My next post on Interprise Suite will discuss deploying to virtual servers and strategies for effectively managing an Interprise server in the cloud. At Hybrid Forge we use VMWare’s ESX Server for virtualizing and managing our servers.  In our data-center environment ESX Server is extremely stable and the performance lost to the hypervisor is ‘virtually’ negligible. We have assisted clients deploying Interprise Suite within shared virtual server environments such as Parallels Virtuozzo and Amazon’s EC2 Cloud Computing Environment.

Contact Hybrid Forge today to discuss what Interprise Suite can do for your business at 877-66-FORGE (3-6743) toll-free.

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