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Ecommerce Templates > Newsletter > October 2010
Welcome to the October edition of the Ecommerce Templates Newsletter where we bring news of the recent release of version 6.0.2, an exclusive Quickbooks offer from Atandra and some helpful css tips.
We have just released version 6.0.2 which is mainly a round up of bug fixes for version 6 and is recommended for all v6.0 and previous users to improve the stability and efficiency of your store.
The changes for the ASP version are listed here and for the PHP version.
Updaters as always are available from the updater page - it doesn't matter which version you are currently running, you can always update to the latest and greatest without going through all previous versions first.
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We've mentioned the importance of setting table backgrounds for the cart, search etc in previous newsletters so we thought we'd take this opportunity to look at this in a bit more depth.
There are three classes used to style the tables:
table.cobtbl – this sets the outline around the tables cells.
td.cobhl – the background color of the highlighted / title cells
td.cobll – the background color of the content cells
You can see an example of a sample cart set up here and we have also prepared some copy and paste examples here for various templates.
Feel free to copy and paste any of those examples into your css file but for those who want to experiment a bit and have something a bit more unique, we've got some suggestions for you below.
You will need a copy of the Firefox browser, with the Developer Toolbar installed.
Now open yourstoreurl.com/search.asp or search.php in Firefox and hit Ctrl + Shift + E. This will open up a sidebar with your css entries listed.
Find the entry for table.cobtbl, td.cobhl and td.cobll or if you don't have those classes present copy and paste the following generic css
table.cobtbl{
background-color: #B1B1B1;
}
td.cobhl{
background-color: #EBEBEB;
}
td.cobll{
background-color: #FFF;
}
Making any changes to those hex values will show in real time on your page but only for you, they won't be live meaning that you can tweak the css as much as you like there without it being shown to the public. This is a great way of experimenting with your look and feel without the danger of mistakes going live.
Once you have the look you're happy with, copy the changes from the sidebar into your main css file. Upload the .css file to your server and check the results.
The example above is a very simple cell background color change but you can add any type of formatting. For example, you might want the highlights to be a background image rather than a flat hex color in which case you'd want something like this
td.cobhl{
background-image: url(images/cellbg.gif);
}
Another idea might be to make the highlights a darker color with lighter text, for example
td.cobhl{
background-color: #336699;
color:#fff;
}
… which will give you a dark blue background for the headings and white text. If you decide on something like that, you might want to give the table a contrasting color, for example
table.cobtbl{
background-color: #C20000;
}
Even if you are not going to be playing around with the css, the Developer Toolbar has a huge number of features, many of which I use on a daily basis, so it's well worth a look.
We'd love to hear your feedback on the css tips or anything else you've read in this newsletter so please feel free to contact Andy, with your thoughts and comments. We would also appreciate any feedback on the individual templates / shopping cart software through the customer review feature we've set up on our product detail pages.