What's the purpose of Fixed vs Non-fixed layouts?

[joebeazelman]

I am trying to make some significant modifications to the general layout of AbleCommerce. So far, I've been modifying the .ascx and .Master files located in the Layouts folder. I understand that some pages use the fixed layouts while other such as the home page use the standard layouts. There appears to be little differences between the files aside from a header change. What's the reasoning behind these two different set of layouts? Finally, there's a Templates folder that contains a Default.html. What generates the Default.html and what is it used for?

Thanks in advance.

[compunerdy]

To make our lives difficult..

The 7.0 system made much more sense to me..

[itnovator]

Agreed, to make our lives difficult...

[mazhar]

What's the reasoning behind these two different set of layouts?

There are two type of pages in ablecommerce. Dynamic Content pages which can be created from within administration panel and physical pages for standard cart functions like Basket page, search page etc. Fixed layouts contains master pages used on physical pages. The reason is to avoid breaking of standard pages while making changes to layout via admin and also to support direct HTML editing from within Visual Studio. The changes you make to layouts via administration are applied on layouts other then Fixed layouts which are then used by dynamic pages (admin -> website -> webpages).

Finally, there's a Templates folder that contains a Default.html. What generates the Default.html and what is it used for?

In admin you have the ability to manage layouts(master pages). These layouts apply on dynamic content pages. Templates/Default.html provides basic HTML and control placeholder when you try to add new Layout(master page) from within admin panel.

[joebeazelman]

Hmmm. I read your response several times and I still don't quite get it. Correct me if I am wrong, Fixed Layouts apply to functional "transactional pages" while dynamic Layouts or standard layouts apply to everything else. I discovered this already from looking at the source. You mentioned the reason is to avoid breaking the standard pages while making changes to the layout, but you also say there's a templates directory for this purpose. I don't see how the fixed pages can break anymore than the standard pages. Furthermore, the template.html still doesn't make any sense as it isn't clear which part of AbleCommerce generates this code. It's really confusing.

Adding to my confusion, the Standard Layouts use the StoreHeader control, while the Cart Layouts don't. The only difference is that the header on the cart pages contains an additional navigation for checkout steps. Couldn't there just be another "CheckoutStepsHeader" user control that is just hidden when not in use? I have to agree with the previous replies, the Gold layout system isn't as clear as the previous version. We've also lost the ability the to change the layout directly in the target page. Frankly, this was one of the cool features of AC. Perhaps this is a work in progress and the implementation is still being worked out?

Change for the better is always welcomed, but I am wondering what the benefits are to these changes either for the shopper or the developer. MVC templates would have offered clear benefits as it is easy to customize and can work alongside Webforms. Webform server controls are outdated and are difficult to style. With careful refactoring, MVC and Webforms can even share a majority of the code-base.

[ForumsAdmin]

To put it in another way there are two types of pages in AC.
1. The pages that can be manipulated directly from the layout editor in merchant admin. i.e; you can chose controls to use, move them around, remove them or whatever. The pages controled this way are dynamic pages. Their layouts (i.e; master pages in actuality) are generated dynamically. Note that such dynamic pages have no corresponding physical 'file' on the system. They are just pages maped at a URL. The actual physical file matching that URL does not exist.

2. Then there are other pages that you don't directly manage from layout editor. Instead you can simply open them in Visual Studio and edit. These are the pages which have corresponding physical files on the system. For example Basket.aspx. For such pages, layouts are fixed - i.e; their layouts are not manipulated by layout editor in admin.

Obviously the question would be why all of the pages are not dynamic? It was a decision made based on feedback from some customers. Some users were not comfortable having all the pages they used to see physically getting disappeared when they upgraded to Gold. Imagine you go to the home folder of your store and see not a single physical file there. Some customers were too nervous to see such a shift. They wanted physical files to be 'seen' and 'edited' in VS. So what we did was to leave all the old physical files there so that they can be directly edited and applied our dynamic layout editor only to the content pages - i.e; category pages, product pages, webpages in AC.

Now about Layouts/Templates/Default.html. This is kind of a hidden gem. This file contans the html skeleton that is used to generate the dynamic layout pages. I would not recomend average developers to try to make changes in this file, but if you know what you are doing, this template will let you control what html is generated for your dynamic pages.

[itnovator]

Much clearer clarification. Thank you.

By the way, on the R3 version, where is the "Default.html" which is used as a base layout to create dynamic layout master file?

[NC Software]

Possibly rename to Dynamic and Static Layouts?

[ForumsAdmin]

By the way, on the R3 version, where is the "Default.html" which is used as a base layout to create dynamic layout master file?

Previously it was part of the code. In R5 it was structured out of the code and created as an html template. If you are at R3 you will not see this file.

[ForumsAdmin]

Possibly rename to Dynamic and Static Layouts?

Agree. May be in the UI, if we are using these terms somewhere, we can make the update - but the change of actual folder name, now that there are hundreds of deployments out there, is asking for trouble.

[joebeazelman]

Thanks for the input. It's a little clearer now, especially after working with it. I think my confusion stems from how the system tries to integrate newer .NET technologies with old ones. I still can't see why there can't be one set of master pages and the Default.html is still a mystery. The designer's guide is really a user manual with little information geared towards a developer.

Is AC Gold being used by any real sites? I am beginning to feel like this is a beta product as there isn't as much activity on this side of the forums.

[jmestep]

We have numerous sites using Gold and tasks for upgrading sites from Able 7 are increasing. One of the largest sites we did is the GPS Store. They upgraded right before Thanksgiving and if there were anything major wrong with Gold R6, they would have found it. The site is http://www.thegpsstore.com/