2 CommentsZen Cart vs osCommerce
I am currently working on Zen Cart projects and thought of leaving some views after working on several osCommerce designs before. This review is solely based on the view point of a designer regarding the template systems on both e-commerce softwares. So which is better, Zen cart or osCommerce?
Talking about the dreaded “Table” coding, Zen cart has moved away from this since version 1.3.5(well - nearly table-less layout). osCommerce is table-based and codes are pretty messy(to me) where I had to mix around with table and css based div.
Another feature that I like is the template overrides system in Zen cart: you can customize your cart by creating your own custom template folder instead of writing to the default templates and thus any future upgrades will not overwrite the customized theme design. See snapshot below.
With osCommerce, there were several projects that I need to edit over 100 files manually just to integrate my design into the modified templates. That was indeed a tedious task editing all those pages manually even though I did use the “Find and Replace” feature from Dreamweaver.
At the point of writting, I would say that I prefer Zen cart over osCommerce in terms of ease of the template customization. Will post further findings after I have completed and uploaded the new Zen cart designs later.
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wrote on Wed June 25th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Just happen to pop by, you may want to try Magento as well. It is the latest craze. :p Easily 10 times better than the two you worked on.