Hi everyone,
The next update to Price Tapestry is now available. 14/06A is primarily a maintenance release to take into account moves and changes in PHP and now requires a minimum of PHP 5.0 and MySQL 4.1.23, however to accompany the new Responsive HTML template (available to download separately for use with an existing 13/03A installation) the administration area has received a complete visual overhaul and is also a fully responsive design. Click the screenshots below for larger view...
Search Results
As with all front end pages in the new Responsive HTML template the layout adjusts nicely across 3 sizes - S (typically smartphones), M (typically tablets and netbooks) and L for desktop. I have concentrated in particular on optimisations for small devices. For example filters are displayed by default on medium and large displays, but initially hidden on small displays, revealed by clicking "Filter These Results↓". Note also how the search result info and sort order links collapse and float through 4 different configurations depending on size.
Product Page
The level of detail included in the price comparison table changes appropriately by size.
Admin Home Page
For the benefit of potential new customers who may not yet be familiar with the Price Tapestry back end, operations highlighted in green require that action to be performed in order to update the site. For example, after uploading a new product feed to the /feeds/ folder, the "Register" action will be highlighted until that operation has been completed. Similarly, if a feed has been modified since it was last imported then the "Import" function will be highlighted.
Feed Registration
Field mapping has been separated into required and optional sections, and you can paginate through the records in the sample data display...
Filter Management
Filters can be reordered using the ↑ and ↓ actions...
Cheers,
David
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PriceTapestry.com
Looks awesome David. It shows up fine in Firefox and on my Android phone too. :)
I really like the new additions for showing more than one record.
Thanks for your comments, bat - and hi everyone,
14/06A (beta) is now available to download.
If you are running a customised installation of an earlier distribution please do not attempt to upgrade to 14/06A (beta) as your changes will be overwritten but as always, following the beta test period I will produce an upgrade guide describing how to "back port" changes into an existing installation if required.
If you encounter any problems, I would appreciate it if you could first see if you are able to recreate the issue on the demo site;
http://www.webpricecheck.co.uk/
http://www.webpricecheck.co.uk/admin/
(username: demo, password: demo)
...and then post the demo site URL and let me know what web browser / version you are using.
Changes to note (documentation will be updated accordingly)
- The admin area is now HTTP/DIGEST password protected. The username is "admin" and the default password is "password". You can change the password at line 2 in config.advanced.php as previously;
$config_adminPassword = "password";- The Automation Tool now attempts to auto configure. The distribution version of line 46 of config.advanced.php is now as follows;
$config_automationHandler = "auto";Under this setting, the script will first attempt to use CURL to fetch remote FTP / HTTP URLs. If CURL is not available then the PHP method (requiring fopen URL wrappers to be enabled) will be used as a fallback. If there is any scenario in which the CURL libraries are installed but cannot be used then $config_automationHandler may be set to "php" to override the autodetection.
Similarly, unzipping of feeds will first attempt to use PHP's internal gzip/zip functions if available. If not available, the script will attempt to execute the external programs as specified in the $config_automationUnzipPrograms setting in config.advanced.php (lines 45-47).
Enjoy, and I look forward to your comments and feedback!
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Hi David
It looks great, I look forward to playing with and testing it, one thing I noticed straight away, on my iphone the h2 banner is not resizing in the mobile browser, meanwhile everything else looks great, obviously this is only the case for longer product names or searches
search.php
line 308 $banner["h2"] = translate("Product search results for")."or
products.php
line 10 $banner["h2"] = translate("Price search results for").Thanks for all the hard works and tweaks you have included in this updated script
thanks
Phil Stone
www.buy24-7.net
Thanks for your comments, Phil!
I'll have access to an iPhone later today and give it a go on that and see if I can spot what's going on; any chance in the mean time you could capture the result on your iPhone (press Home + Sleep simultaneously) and pop it in an email for me? This is the intended appearance for mobile display - I assume the text remains sized as if medium or large?
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Hello Phil,
I've just tried your site on an iPhone, it looks like the font-size attribute isn't overriding Foundation's CSS in this case, but also nowrap may be undesirable. In html/default.php, look for the following section beginning at line 97:
.pt_ba h2,.pt_ba h3 {
white-space: nowrap;
font-size: 12px;
color: #999;
}
.pt_ba h2 {
float: left;
white-space: nowrap;
}...and REPLACE with:
.pt_ba h2,.pt_ba h3 {
font-size: 12px !important;
color: #999;
}
.pt_ba h2 {
float: left;
}Hope this helps!
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Bob L.
Hi David,
I really like some of the new features.
Especially where you can move the filters up and down.
Would like to see that feature on the automation tool where I have the same merchant from different networks, so that PriceTapestry would import the preferred network merchant first then any of the other products that aren't listed in the preferred network for that merchant next. So that the majority of the products are on the preferred network.
Hope that makes sense to you.
For some unknown reason I can't log into the admin area with a password in advanced.config file. . just removing the password will let me in.
Thanks for your comments, Bob!
Feed import priority is certainly something I could help you set-up! The actual order is undefined for the import all process but a sequence field could be added to the `feeds` table which would enable re-ordering.
Regarding /admin/ login, could you let me know what PHP version you are running (displayed on Tools > Support Info)?
Thanks!
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Thanks Bob - I'll follow up by email.
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Hi everyone,
Just a quick update on the beta distribution.
Had lots of great feedback by email, only one recurring issue so far which is that it turns out that HTTP/DIGEST authentication does not work reliably when PHP is running in CGI mode rather than as an Apache module. Therefore I have removed the default password of "password" from the distribution so you will have immediate access to /admin/. For the release, I will re-introduce the original cookie based method to use as a fallback if HTTP/DIGEST is not available.
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Hi everyone,
With virtually no issues reported and lots of positive feedback received from customers both new and old 14/06A is now considered a "Release Candidate" and will be out of beta shortly once documentation and other references have been updated. Since the last update, the only changes to have been applied are as follows:
- Minor admin area usability enhancements
- Reversion to cookie based admin area login
- Admin area fully translatable via includes/translate.php (more info)
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Hi everyone,
The new admin area is now up and running on the demo site, please check out
http://www.webpricecheck.co.uk/admin/
Username: demo
Password: demo
New interactive functionality that you might like to experiment with;
- Navigation of sample data on Feed Registration Step 2 allowing you to view more than the first record when setting up a feed (Example Page).
- Helper tool - now a common element used by Product Mapping, Category Mapping and Featured Products. Search keywords for the item being mapped, and either select result(s) and click « alongside to add as exact matches, or click « alongside the search box to add that term as a keyword alternative (Example Page).
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com