Thanks, Josh. If you want to customize the shopping cart part of a Merchant Solutions store, there are two ways to do it if you don't like the look of the SIMPLE CART.
The first way is to modify the VARIABLES so the look and feel of the page is similar to your site's look and feel. The second way is to make an easy custom template, change the shopping cart to use that template, and then copy your site's html template into that template.
Here's how I did on gringoscalendar.com for my friend Greg. THIS WAY KEEPS YOU OUT OF THE VARIABLES.
By the way, if you are going to do much in the way of RTML, you need Michael Whitaker's and Istvan Siposs's books on RTML.
FIRST, GET YOUR HTML
Get the HTML that you want to wrap around your CUSTOM-CART.
-- Cut it in half where the INSIDE or meat of the cart will be, it's usually 550-650 pixels wide. The top half goes in the TOP field and the bottom half goes in the BOTTOM field
-- Remember, you'll need absolute or full path URLS for images and links like http://www.mydomain.com/images/image.jpg rather than relative URLS like /images/image.jpg because the NORDER / shopping cart is on the STORE EDITOR side of Yahoo! Store.
-- Remove quotes and apostrophes because the CGI-BIN used in rendering the NSEARCH and NORDER pages seems to give you wonky html when it has to deal with quotes and apostrophes. I simply find and replace in a text editor. The worst case is pieces of your html look like they disappear. Symptoms include text not formatted properly.
NEXT, GO TO THE YAHOO STORE EDITOR. MAKE NECESSARY YAHOO STORE EDITOR TWEAKS
I went to the STORE EDITOR, and changed the EDITOR to the ADVANCED version by clicking on the little red arrow to the right of all the EDITOR NAVBUTTONS. I also turned the "FIND" on under CONTROLS and I did my usual Store Editor tweaks.
Default Editor Mode -- Advanced
Site Buttons -- Show Publish and Manager buttons on every page
Look and Layout -- No
Editor Entry Page -- CONTENTS
Show Find Button -- YES
Color Code Input -- Decimal
Use Java -- NO
Help On -- NO
Show Uncalled Templates -- NO
Index Page Size -- 100
Use S-Key Authentication NO
-- -- --
NEXT, LOOK AT THE NORDER or SHOPPING CART PAGE
Use FIND to go to the page/object NORDER. You can't really see the "meat" of the cart part until you are on the published site. It's called by the subtemplate: ORDER-PAGE which calls ORDER-BODY which uses the ORDER-FORM command which calls the "meat" of the shopping cart.
Click EDIT. See the ID is "norder," the Type is "norder." with a period, and the TEMPLATE is "page." Click CANCEL.
-- -- --
NOW COPY AN EXISTING TEMPLATE AND CUSTOMIZE IT.
It's easier than it sounds. Go to TEMPLATES. Find the "ORDER-BODY." template and click on it. On the second row of buttons click the COPY TEMPLATE button. Name it CUSTOM-CART and click COPY.
Now let's modify it. We need to make the TOP field above the table, and the BOTTOM field below the table.
Click on the word TABLE to use the STACK EDITOR. Click NEW. Under COMPLEX, scroll down to TEXT. Click CREATE. Click REPLACE. Click EDIT. In the ARG field, type @TOP and hit UPDATE. Click on TEXT. Click PASTE AFTER. Click NEW. Under COMPLEX, scroll down to TEXT. Click CREATE. Click PASTE AFTER. Click EDIT. In the ARG field, type @BOTTOM and hit UPDATE. Click on TEXT. Click PASTE AFTER.
Your new template should look like this:
CUSTOM-CART (wid)
TEXT @top
TABLE border 0
cellspacing 0
cellpadding 0
width wid
TABLE-ROW valign :top
TABLE-CELL
ORDER-FORM
TEXT @bottom
-- -- --
NOW MAKE THE NORDER USE THE NEW "CUSTOM-CART" TEMPLATE INSTEAD OF "PAGE."
goto NORDER. Click EDIT. Change the TEMPLATE from "page." to CUSTOM-CART. Click UPDATE.
-- -- --
NOW CREATE CUSTOM TOP & BOTTOM FIELDS
This will make a place for your HTML to go in the new shopping cart.
On the NORDER page click EDIT. Click the NEW PROPERTY button. Create a property named TOP that is a BIG-TEXT field. Now create a property called BOTTOM that is a BIG-TEXT field. In the TOP field, type this is the top. In the BOTTOM field, type this is the bottom." Click UPDATE.
Now you see how it works. Click EDIT and replace what you just typed with your HTML. Most of the HTML will be in the TOP field. Depending on your html code, the BOTTOM field will be most likely be lots of close table tages like </td></tr></table>.
Click UPDATE and see if your NORDER looks like an empty shopping cart. I usually have to tweak my html several times to get everything just right.
-- -- --
Now PUBLISH your changes and go to the real site and see if it works. If it doesn't, you can change the TEMPLATE back to PAGE. and PUBLISH, or change to the SIMPLE CART under STORE MANAGER > ORDER FORM SETTINGS to use the dumbed down version of the cart until you get your html fixed.
-- -- --
If this makes no sense, or I missed something, please give me a holler! -- Rob
