Hi everyone and Happy New Year!

There is a poll "What Version are you using?", but it is eight years old.

As we enter 2024, I would be happy to hear which version(s) you are currently using, and why.

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How to fill the following survey

For your answers in this thread, I would suggest that you copy the whole survey, fill it and remove the version-specific questions that are not relevant in your case.

( ) = one possible answer (= radio button)
[ ] = several possible answers

For the pseudo-checkboxes represented by brackets:

• tick them with a x if or primary importance
• tick them with a o if of secondary importance
• use numbers ([3],[ ],[1],[2]) in case you want to prioritize answers by order of importance.

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Let's start!

1. Since when are you a user of AbanteCart?

2. How many websites are you managing that use AbanteCart?
- in production: ...
- in development: ...

3. Which kind or user are you currently?

( ) invididual seller with in-house web skills. I installed and adapted AbanteCart to my needs.
( ) employee as IT specialist for a company that uses AbanteCart
( ) webagency or freelance, creating eCommerce websites for others
( ) end user, either self-employed or employee. (The website has been installed and configured by someone other.)
( ) other (please specify)

4. Did you test only one or several versions?
   Which ones and to what extent?

5. Which versions are you currently using?
   (Please specify if your are using them in production or in development.)

6. If you are using version 1.2, for which reason(s)?

Historical reasons:
[ ] Version 1.2 was the most recent available one when I created my website or when I did the last update from a prior version.
[ ] Because this is the version that I installed initially, although newer versions were available.
[ ] Because this version was installed by our IT specialist or web agency.
[ ] Because this is the version that was installed by Softaculous on my web hosting.

Technical reasons
[ ] After some comparative tests with version 1.3, I found that version 1.2 was still better for me. (Please tell when you tested version 1.3.)
[ ] Because they were few translations or extensions for the version 1.3 at the time I installed AbanteCart, version 1.2 was a better choice.
[ ] Because I have customized it a lot and changing would be difficult.
[ ] Some translations that I use are available for the version 1.2 but not yet for the 1.3.
[ ] Some extensions that I use are currently available for the version 1.2, but not the 1.3.
[ ] I find that the catalogue of available extensions globally better for version 1.2 than for version 1.3.
[ ] I find that some extensions are better for version 1.2 than for version 1.3. (Please specify which ones.)
[ ] Because the PHP version that my hosting is using is incompatible with newer versions.
[ ] Stability reason (Please detail.)
[ ] Security reason (Please detail.)

Other reasons
[ ] The size of the community seems larger for this version.
[ ] I prefer version 1.2 to version 1.3 for other reason(s). Please explain: ...

7. If you are using version 1.2, why did you not upgrade to version 1.3?

[ ] My website is okay with version 1.2 and I don't fully feel yet the need to upgrade.
[ ] So far, I  could not find enough time to test newer versions.
[ ] So far, I could not find enough time to migrate the data.
[ ] Upgrading to version 1.3 would be too complex.
[ ] Version 1.3 brings some useless features and/or some useless addtional complexity.
[ ] Other reason that was already mentioned at point 6.

8. If you are using version 1.3, how did you come to this version?

[ ] Version 1.3 was available when I started my eCommerce and I simply decided to select the newest version.
[ ] After some initial tests with versions 1.2 and 1.3, I found that version 1.3 was better for me.
[ ] I upgraded my eCommerce to version 1.3 from a prior version (1.2 or older).
[ ] I am doing it, but this is work in progress and it requires time.

9. If you are using version 1.3, for which reason(s)?

Historical reasons
[ ] It was already available when I created my eCommerce. I simply downloaded the most up-to-date version.
[ ] Because this version was installed by our IT specialist of web agency.
[ ] Because this is the version that was installed by Softaculous on my web hosting.

Technical reasons
[ ] After some comparative with version 1.2, I found that version 1.3 was the best for me. (Please mention when you tested.)
[ ] Some translations that I use are available for the version 1.3 but not for the 1.2
[ ] Some extensions that I use are currently available for the version 1.3 but not for the 1.2.
[ ] I find that the catalogue of available extensions globally better for version 1.3 than for version 1.2.
[ ] I find that some extensions are better in version 1.3 than in version 1.2. (Please specify which ones.)
[ ] Because of the PHP version that my hosting is using is incompatible with older versions.
[ ] Stability reason. (Give detail if necessary.)
[ ] Security reason (Give detail if necessary.)
[ ] Because I prefer the installer of version 1.3 to thus of version 1.2.

Other reasons
[ ] The size of the community seems larger for this version.
[ ] Because I wanted to test it.
[ ] I prefer version 1.3 to version 1.2 for other reason(s). Please explain: ...

10. If you are using version 2.0, for which reason?

[ ] I belong to AbanteCart 2.0 core developer team.
[ ] I am developer of extensions or translations and I am writing them or adapting them to AbanteCart 2.0.
[ ] After some comparative tests, I believe the version 2.0 is the future.
[ ] I am seller and I believe that AbanteCart 2.0 is already good enough for in-production sites.
[ ] I am currently porting my website from version 1.x to version 2.0.
[ ] Other reason. Please describe: ...

11. Is there something this survey missed about AbanteCart versions and that you would like to share?
...

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Thank you for sharing!

A useful new feature that could be implemented is relations between categories.
Something similar to relations between products, without having to link each product individually.

Examples where such feature would be useful:

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1) Software > Apple <===> Software > Microsoft > Office for Windows and Mac

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2) Supplies > Toners > Some brand > Toners for ABCD  <===>  Peripherals > Printers > Color printers > Some brand > Printer ABCD

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3) Notebooks > Dell > Latitude series  <===> Accessories > Notebook Accessories > External power supplies > 19V > Dell

In the first example, Microsoft Office products can be found in both "Software > Apple" and "Software > Microsoft".
For instance "Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac" is in "Software > Apple", whilst "Microsoft Office 2019 for Windows/Mac" is in "Software > Microsoft". Creating "See also" links between these categories would avoid the visitor missing some product.

In the second example, linking the color printer together with the category containing different color cartridges would be easier than creating relation with the different products.

In the third example they may be many different accessories (power supplies, sleeves, ...) for a family of notebooks.

Hello.
I was aware of the possibility to change the theme.
Thank you for the useful link.

Hello,

I am building my eCommerce and here's a situation that inspired me to consider a different category layout.

As visible in attached pictures, some toner cartridges are for color printers : consequently the misc colors for a same type of cartridge are grouped into subfolders (TN-241, TN-320, TN-325).
On the contrary, the TN-6300 toner cartridge is for black and white printers ; hence no need to create a subfolder for it.

With the actual layout for category pages, a product that is not in a subcategory is shifted downwards on the page (like the TN-6300 cartridge in my example), because the thumbnails for subcategories take quite a lot of place. There is a risk of missing this product: on my laptop, unless I scroll down the page, only the its title is visible, not the picture.
Also, products that are located in sub-categories are not shown.

With the suggested layout, subcategories are displayed smaller in kind of a tooltip, which is attached and more or less centered to the last breadcrumb. The look of this box would be similar to the one used for language selection on multilingual sites, but permanently displayed (not only on mouse-click or mouse-over). If there are many subcategories, an horizontal scroll bar could appear at the bottom of the tooltip.
With this layout, the last breadcrumb is highlighted, and it save us the title, which is a duplicate.
For SEO,  the last tooltip should likely be marked <h1>, but with a custom class to display it correctly.

I would also suggest showing products from subcategories, using recursion ; the number of products that are dislayed can be limited and pagination used.

I think we can also save some space with the "Sort" select list, which could be upper right, as well as the two buttons to select matrix VS list view (not on my mock-up).

So far, I didn't think much about how the suggested layout would behave on mobile devices, but I think the width of the "tooltip" could be adapted accordingly, and using for each subcategory some markup like <div style="max-width:...;display:inline-block;float:left"></div> they would simply stack one over each over.

My mockup is partial as I didn't redesign the product previews.

Thank you for your feedback on these ideas.

Hello,

I am using AbanteCart version 1.2.11 and the French and German translations downloaded from GitHub.

There is a bug when saving products that have a decimal value for length and/or weight in the French and German translations of the admin, where, those fields expect the comma as delimitor of the decimal value, and don't let save the product if using the dot delimitor. (see attached picture)

Other fields like price, width, and height are not concerned by the bug.
Also, the bug occurs only with the translations: the admin is working properly if in English.

I would suggest that the dot (and not the comma) being used as decimal delimitor, at least in the admin.
Although the comma is "officially" the right decimal delimitor in French, the dot is much more common when using softwares and everyone is accustomed to it.

Tested for Abantecart 1.2.11:

1) Optional: disabling the social icons block

• remove the social icons from the layout  in Design > Layouts > Social icons
  (click the "Enable/Disable" button, then the "Save" button).
  
  
• disable the social icons block: inDesign > Blocks, search for "social" in the "Name" column, and switch the status off the Social icons to Off

2) Edit "storefront/view/default/stylesheet/style.css" and replace "float: left" by "float: right" for blocks 5 to 7, at lines 418 to 426.

3) Optional: If you want to keep the original order these blocks, go to "Design > Layout" and drag and drop the blocks to invert their order.
The block you want the most to the right must be on the left in "Design > Layout". Then click the "Save" button.

Thank you abantecart.

I added two more ideas (6 and 7) in my original post.

I want to detail more my thoughts about why the pictures of products should not be resized nor renamed (apart for those duplicated as thumbnails).

There are two kind of merchants:

• those who pre-process / optimize product images,
• those who don't.

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1. Merchants that optimize product pictures
They have several reasons for doing so:

• Products have by nature different sizes, and their visual inspection may require different level of details.
  Example: A 30cm motherboard might need a high-resolution picture so that one can inspect tiny inscriptions on components, whilst a 2cm CMOS clock battery is smaller by nature and doesn't need close inspection.
• Make images faster to load (size, color depth, compression) and still good enough for the given purpose.
• Metadata can be embedded inside the pictures for SEO optimization.

For this category of merchants, pictures being resized and renamed by AbanteCart is painful.
Hence, image processing by AbanteCart should be disabled by default.

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2. Merchants that don't optimize pictures, either

• because they are ignorant
• beause they don't care much about the quality of the pictures for their webshop
• because they don't have time, and just want to upload pictures form their smartphones

Keeping in mind this category of merchants, AbanteCart could perform several successive checks after the picture was uploaded, and fire dialogs where the user can accept or reject a suggested image optimization.

• is the picture too large in size?
  
• is the picture large is pixels (e.g. over 800x800)?
  
• could the picture be in a better format for the web (e.g. webp instead of png)?
  

The dialog(s) could:

• ask the user if he wants AbanteCart to rezize the picture or keep it as it is
• suggest toggling on the image resize feature in the "Admin > Settings > Apparence" section.
• offering a "Don't ask again" checkbox" (useful for those users who are doing image preprocessing)
• make users more instructed, suggesting some softwares for image pre-processing (e.g. IrfanView, Gimp), or provinding a link to a documentation topic about this

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In summary: a shopping cart system is not an image processing software and should not do what can be done better by a well-educated merchant using dedicated software.
However, AbanteCart could detect images that a priori seem unoptimized and suggest (not impose) resizing them.

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N.B. CubeCart is doing things well, by placing the original images in a "image/source" folder.

Cheers.