AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

Is there a way to customize how options and variants disaplyed. for instance, displaying colors in a drop down box, and once a color is seleced the image of the product change, instead of showing the swatches as little thumbnail? is there a way to have a default color selected? thanks

Yes this is possible. I guess you need to make some mods to get this done. Something similar is been discussed here.
viewtopic.php?f=44&t=6467

I guess I have seen it implemented on some AbleCommerce powered store some where in forums. Let me make a quick search may be I found some link to that store.

Have a look at product display page of this store. Its doing something similar I guess
http://www.musthavebag.com/Our-best-sel ... P1C48.aspx