Still looks terrible

What i don't get about hikashop, is that even after a couple of years of being established when you install the extension, it looks absolutely terrible and clunky.

Category and Product pages are just crap. Why don't the hika team spend some time and have their front end looking good out of the box. You shouldn't have to spend hours on css to try and make it look like a normal shopping cart.

I even bought the styles packages but they just look old and outdated.

i think it inherits a bunch of stuff from the joomla template and so it stuffs it all up even more.

geez it annoys me, it is not user friendly at all! I would like hikashop to look more professional like mijoshop/open cart, but i like hikashop's joomla nativeness and integration with other extensions.

it just needs heaps of work on having it look good from the get go. There is so many little tweaks and css changes you need to do to get it to look ok. You need a Masters degree in webdesign to try and make it look good.

Hello there,

I can understand your frustration but the minimalist Hikashop design is actually kind of wanted by the Team.
The point is that we want our product to be easily usable with any template and fit everybody's needs. You can easily imagine that orange buttons and a fashion product listing would be amazing for some people but not for others with a purple template...
Also, Hikashop is full of options which are really nice looking like the social networks buttons or the vote/comment system but we want our component to be minimalist so people can custom it the way they want.
So, since it's clearly impossible to make some really nice looking which suit to everybody, we prefer to propose something clean and easily customizable. Take a look at the gallery, people make awesome stuff with Hikashop . You can by the way find some template which override Hikashop style and make it look great.

However, we are currently working on some new style for Hikashop to give it a nice touch after installing. Also, we are thinking about creating more layout for the listing product and product display to have some original things. Plus we are totally open to new creations from our users.

In the end, I must say that our component is focused on functionalities, we just aim to propose a complete online shop component and let the users make it look nice. I'm sure you prefer to have all these functionalities we propose instead of a nice design without our features . But we don't forget this part of the job, it's something we keep in mind!

im not talking about colours or fitting into someone's template.

im talking about the layout of the pages and basic styling. It is too minimalist, to the point that it is not user friendly for most people.

i have looked at most of the showcase websites and there aren't that many that look good. Even professional webdesign companies that spend alot of time customising hikashop to create a custom theme don't look too great either.

I think that minimalist design is in actual fact doing worse than good as it makes all installations of hikashop look very average and not slick and professional which is what you want in a shopping cart as you are trying to impress customers!!

If you want to be impressed just take a look at these websites made with Hikashop :

manga.kaze.fr/catalogue
www.workaholicfashion.net/en/shop/product/listing
www.somethingyoufancy.co.uk/
www.gcmstores.com/
www.originalsaltlamps.com.au/
www.hidesign.it/

You can imagine that making that kind of shop would have been harder if we had already set some specific design.
However I agree with you for the layout, as I said, we are working to make some new and cooler layout as we have done with the sliding product layout.

Not that impressed with these and I can tell that someone has spent alot of time on these to make them look good.

I dont think that it would make it harder for a competent coder/designer to customise if it came by default with a better template.

By default, hikashop when installed should look 'good'. It should not be required to go in and set a million settings and customise a million content menus, modules blah blah blah to get it looking like a shopping cart!

The other thing which annoys me with Hikashop is how it creates a million 'Associated products listing for category listing menu 101820' modules. When you have a large shop, this quickly just gets annoying having hundreds of these annoying modules. I want a lean and clean shop but instead with hikashop it just clogs it up with all this crap.

All the settings for a menu or a module should be within the joomla setting for that page. All other extensions on Joomla do this, i dont see why Hikashop needs to go and start making it difficult. This is the biggest gripe i know hikashop users have, and it makes it harder to teach clients how to use hikashop. It is not kept simple and inline with how other joomla extensions work.

Hikashop should have a template system (like Redshop has) instead of the confusing 'views'. This is not user friendly and makes it harder again. And then by default you create a really good default template which out of the box looks and functions like a shopping cart so the average user can install and just start selling and for those people who wish to customise it they can then work on the templates to suit their needs.

woonydanny


Is there a web page about the functionnalities/specifications/choice make by the people ( designer , php, css javascript guy) who implement the redshot template ( override,css framework, javascript , font em rem ,grid ,module layout position information , layout fixed/flexible % ^pixel , mobile using mediaqueries , ......).
Can you post the redshop template or give me a link to let me have a look to the htm/css structure behaviour . If redshop use a standart joomla template , why not use redhsop template with hikashop ?



regards

lionel, i dont think you understand. It is not a redshop template that you can use with hikashop. Whilst redshop on the whole is rubbish software, they did have a pretty good way of creating 'templates' for each thing, which used tags to show each item. This meant you could easily move things around or change things to make the page look different.

In anycase, I will probably, albeit reluctantly, migrate my Hikashops to MijoShop as although it isnt joomla native in the sense it runs opencart as well, it does look like a shopping cart should look and have things in logical and intuitive places.

For example, you shouldn't have to go in and edit css to have a discounted price to display as red and the old price crossed out. This is basic shopping cart standards! yes it should be customisable for those that want it different but 'out of the box' it should display like this.

Other things like you should be able to set the product discount from the Product page! not in some other separate area that makes it confusing to match discounts to products.

I mentioned above how confusing it is that Hikashop has options within the joomla modules and menu pages. Associated modules are too confusing and just makes it messy with all these listed. Overall it is not simplistic enough for an average user to easily work their way around and it is too unprofessional looking.

Personally, I know Nicolas, Oliver, Xavier etc are super helpful in the forum, but the Hika team need to work on the product as it is when it is installed on fresh install. Compare theirs to say Opencart or Mijoshop and they will realise theirs looks terrible and takes forever customising basic styling needs that should be standard.

thank's for your reply .
I don't try to style at this time, i only try to understand the strucuture ( link logic beetween layout pages) of all hikashop extension and read the forum to know wich problem the end user have.
What i see is that in many cases , user have to change the code in php file . I hope that all php file could be override and place under /root/template/TemplateName/html/com_hikashop/ .

i think joomla must be use for custom HTML code that need specific id/class name. If id class name are use on ly for style ( not script); i think CSS editor is the way to go even most templates like adding many param to custom layout/style .

i was thinking since i understand joomla that i ll understand all others extensions easely like hikashop ... and you write i am in the wrong way OOPS !!!

hikashop create under hikashop ->display ->view for each template 75 items ? all this items are a link to the the same file and can be override so items are specific to specific template !!! .... so hikashop work like joomla .

Hikashop let us create new Hikashop Module and Hikashop menu type so we have access to custom style using the page display option . I really don 't understand where is the problem;

it is about
Menu ?
=>1) hikashop don't use pageclass_sfx even show this item in option/ param ?
=>2) the name use by hikashop is not standart ( Parameter basic, Parameter component, parameter System)


Module
=> 1) 2 step is need by using an "hikashop option" link for access Details , menu assigment, basic options Advanced options


it is not too cubersome since in most of the case you have to look to the code source and Mysql DB and html rendering to understand the logic of parameters ..if not documented ..

Now i have some others questions ( even i could search by myself..too late )

1) is there a hikashop default css and where is location ?



2) Some same file name end with bootstrap. As i see they contain bootstrap class/id Name ( control-group ....) . at this time only custom_fields and registration support boostraps. I think hikashop have code to manage/call this file when hikashop is install on a joomla 3 system. So
does other php files ll have bootstrap suffix


Regard's

thank 's , i don't have a look to others php files.

OK i understand better now.

Thank's

If Hikashop will look good out of the box - you'll get more business customers will be able to expand the team and make improvements more quickly.
I think it's much more important task than adding new functionality.
As part of the design I really like the work of the team YOOtheme.
Their new framework WARP is simply wonderful - www.yootheme.com/blog/2013/06/24/warp7-engage
You made ​​the best component e-commerce to Joomla. It remains to make it perfect

here a link about designer view about boostrap
Please stop using Twitter Bootstrap