Break up categories

[Guest americanheathen]

I am trying to break up my "shop by category" box into 3 sections or just turn it into 3 different boxes. Has this been covered here, I searched but didn't find anything. The menu is at http://middleearth.biz . I would like something like the following:

Departments

Armor and Shields

Weapons

Mens Clothing

Womens Clothing

Accessories

Miscellaneous

Specials

Closeout

Weekly Specials

Wholesale Club

Liscensed Goods

Lord of the Rings

Kingdom of Heaven

Forgotten Realms

Pirates of the Caribbean

Star Wars

Monty Python

Warhammer

Wheel of Time

Words in bold are non clickable. The less desireable for me would be to have three seperate boxes with the Bold words as the box titles.

Can anyone help. comment, or point me in the right direction?

[roban]

I don't see a menu at all on your site. I see you have latest products and they are all messed up and not aligned. You might want to clean up your site before adding mods. What is that box in the header with the slider that doesn't slide?

[Guest]

You still need some work on your layout, but that's not too bad to fix.

Why not just put your cats into sub-cats? That would take of your problem without having to further tweak your install.

If you're using my mod to rearrange the category order, it works just as well with sub categories too. :D

[Guest americanheathen]

You still need some work on your layout, but that's not too bad to fix.

Why not just put your cats into sub-cats?  That would take of your problem without having to further tweak your install.

If you're using my mod to rearrange the category order, it works just as well with sub categories too. 

I don't see a menu at all on your site.  I see you have latest products and they are all messed up and not aligned.  You might want to clean up your site before adding mods.  What is that box in the header with the slider that doesn't slide?

What browser are you guys using? Below is what the site looks like to me.

The next picture is what I want it to look like:

Can anyone help me with this?

[roban]

I'm not seeing your left menus in Firefox at all and your products are out of whack. I see your menus in IE and your products are aligned while Opera renders the site in a complately different way with no menu but the space for it is on the right and not the left.

[Guest americanheathen]

I'm not seeing your left menus in Firefox at all and your products are out of whack.  I see your menus in IE and your products are aligned.

How the heck am I going to fix that other than puting in a comment stating that "this site is optimized for IE6"?

[roban]

There is a style.css fix that involves having seperate style sheets for IE and FF but that's not a viable solution in your case although you might want to research it. I think a better fix would be in your existing code. What Mods have you added and what code have you changed?

IMO optimizing a site for Firefox (which is more unforgiving than IE) makes sense. Doing this, you are pretty much assured of a good fit for IE.

[Guest americanheathen]

There is a style.css fix that involves having seperate style sheets for IE and FF but that's not a viable solution in your case although you might want to research it.  I think a better fix would be in your existing code.  What Mods have you added and what code have you changed?

Mods

• Shipping_By_Value_v3
  
• GroupDiscounts
  
• category_aligning_and_displaying_mod
  
• of course, my self styled live support modish addition
  

And a little tinkering with the code inside the skin to make the right col. non-existant and expand the center col. to around 568 px to push it all the way over to the right.

[roban]

There is a style.css fix that involves having seperate style sheets for IE and FF but that's not a viable solution in your case although you might want to research it.  I think a better fix would be in your existing code.  What Mods have you added and what code have you changed?

Mods

• Shipping_By_Value_v3
  
  
  
• GroupDiscounts
  
  
  
• category_aligning_and_displaying_mod
  
  
  
• of course, my self styled live support modish addition
  

And a little tinkering with the code inside the skin to make the right col. non-existant and expand the center col. to around 568 px to push it all the way over to the right.

"And a little tinkering with the code inside the skin to make the right col. non-existant and expand the center col. to around 568 px to push it all the way over to the right."

Maybe a little more tinkering would be in order. Can you post the code for this 'tinker'? :D

[Guest americanheathen]

These are the changes I made within layout.css:

from:

.colLeft {

	position: relative;

	left: 0px;

	width: 160px; 

	padding-left: 9px;

	padding-right: 5px;

	float: left;

}

.colMid {

	position: relative;

	width: 398px;

	float: left;

}

.colRight {

	position: relative;

	width: 160px; 

	padding-left: 5px;

	right: 9px;

	float: right;

to:

.colLeft {

	position: relative;

	left: 0px;

	width: 160px; 

	padding-left: 9px;

	padding-right: 5px;

	float: left;

}

.colMid {

	position: relative;

	width: 558px;

	padding-top: 5px

	padding-right: 0px;

	padding-left: 0px;

	right: 0px;

	float: center;

}

.colRight {

	position: relative;

	width: 0px; 

	padding-left: 0px;

	right: 0px;

	float: right;

[Guest americanheathen]

I wanted to get rid of the right col. completely but couldnt figure it out so I tested and previewed and tested and.... until it looked right to me.

[roban]

.colMid {

position: relative;

width: 558px;

padding-top: 5px

padding-right: 0px;

padding-left: 0px;

right: 0px;

float: center;

Change this value back to 'left'. It has nothing to do with column position but only tells how text or images are wrapped.

Your middle column is too wide for the skin also. Try using the original default.

[Guest americanheathen]

That would mean that I would have to go back to having a right col. That is what I am trying to not do.

[roban]

Good and now your images are aligned in Firefox and IE and I see your menu. Congratz.

[Guest americanheathen]

Good and now your images are aligned in Firefox and I see your menu. Congratz.

Oh great! That's a relief. What was it you were seeing in ff that had a slider - that looks fine in IE?

[roban]

That would mean that I would have to go back to having a right col. That is what I am trying to not do.

You're there. Nothing else to do. :D

[roban]

Good and now your images are aligned in Firefox and I see your menu.  Congratz.

Oh great! That's a relief. What was it you were seeing in ff that had a slider - that looks fine in IE?

It's your chat thingee. Looks bad and you can do better or put it somewhere else.

[Guest]

Unless your categories change frequently, why not just hard-code what you want into your skin/template? It will work just fine and you don't have to worry about mucking with the PHP if you don't want to.

I know I prefer to recode things, but from what I've seen, that's beyond your scope of experience. So the next best thing is hard-coding. :D

[Guest apple]

Unless your categories change frequently, why not just hard-code what you want into your skin/template? It will work just fine and you don't have to worry about mucking with the PHP if you don't want to.

I still cant find the answer. Am looking for a similar solution. Why are all my sub-categories squashed to the left?? I am trying to arrange them in 3 in a row. It only show 2 in a row on a normal screen. But, I cant find anywhere to change that. When I look at the layout on a 21" screen, it shows 3 in a row but there is a big white space on the right between the right column.