description layout

If anyone is looking for a easy way to implement a tabbed feature into their website, I would highly recommend this add-on from Greg's company.  It was no more difficult to install than any other upgrade from Early Impact...hah! not sure that is good thing .
It does modify the pcProduct table, but the add-on includes a simple script to do that, so that was not a problem.  It supports up to 6 tabs , which you can name whatever you want, and they only are activated when there is something in the text field relating to that tab.  I just have to fill in all the information on each of our 2000 products, but Greg is working on a CSV import for that too.   

After using your own site link I found that you listed www.starmarinedepot.com as having te tabs and I tested there on their 'specifications' tab, which did not turn out to be searchable.

I'm not sure I understand why one would want listings that are only partially searchable.

Generally a catalog needs to be searchable in two ways:

1) Querying unstructured text (like a long description). This one is usually not well developed in many shopping carts, for lack of use of all Boolean operators and lack of option for multiple queries in one expression),
2) Querying structured text (so fields with standard content). This is usually minimally available in most shopping carts. I'm not sure though of the test site's fields under 'specifications' are really 'standard content' or if each field has variable unstructured content.

The real question is: How can any buyer understand what he is querying with Search or Advanced Search when Tabs are at play. The way those Searches are set up now, it is confusing to say the least. Tabs is a great 'visual' improvement, but it should be developed 'in context', so results-oriented, meaning that it should be developed bearing in mind its impact on other components of PC. Otherwise it has the opposite effect of what it intends, being not and easier navigation for buyers, but a more difficult one.



Edited by leeflang - 07-April-2009 at 11:10pm

I tried do an Advanced Search on that site using the tabs using the words Morse Code SOS and it came with zero results despite that at least one item has Morse Code SOS in the specifications.

How is the tab going to help buyers if one cannot find the content?

Just a note to using this feature.  I had products that did not have a short description, and the end result looked wrong.  The tabbed part was displayed in the short description section.  It will be fixed once you add a short description.    So don't forget the short description. 
I've also noticed that the font for the tabs was rather small.  So here is my code fix.
Katharina


<code>
<div class="TabbedPanels" id="TabbedPanels1">
<ul class="TabbedPanelsTabGroup">
<li class="TabbedPanelsTab"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Details</span></li>
<li class="TabbedPanelsTab"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Features</span></li>
<li class="TabbedPanelsTab"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Gift Ideas</span></li>
</ul>
<div class="TabbedPanelsContentGroup">
<div class="TabbedPanelsContent">These are the product details</div>
<div class="TabbedPanelsContent">This is a list of features included in this product</div>
<div class="TabbedPanelsContent">Here are some ideas of what a wonderful gift this product can be</div>
</div>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var TabbedPanels1 = new Spry.Widget.TabbedPanels("TabbedPanels1");
</script>
</code>


Edited by katharina - 17-March-2009 at 8:37pm

This sounds great and we are wanting to integrate this tabbed layout on our new site.

Other than what you have described (naming the individual tabs) we would like to be able to do this on a by item basis as different types of products would contain different information and thus different tab names.
So maybe the control panel could say
How many tabs for this product, then have a database field for the name of the tab and another for the HTML description.

How long for version 4? ;-)