Im using SCCP and SCDP. I went in and got my theme the way that I wanted to look and was at first ok with only four thumbnails. But about halfway through my shop I realized one product that I will be listing will have 9 different color variations. I could make each color option a ind. product itself but that will be taking up valuable space. Is there not away to create more than four thumbnails on the product details page so that I can accomidate pics of the different color options and just have one product where you can select the color?

Hiya Justin,

One of the best ways to accommodate the need for extra photos is to make a collage which contains multiple color swatches or whatever types of things you need. When clicked that image will enlarge so you can get a pretty good image of different colors in your case without too much difficulty.

Yeah, I should have thought of that Jo Ann. But am I correct that there currently is no way to add more than 4 thumbnails?

Animated gif or png to rotate colors?

Nice idea Tom. Simple but affective.

Tom that sounds really good. Ive never actually created an animated gif or png so forgive me if I get a little off track. But to do this in SCCP you would have to code this into the product description because if Im not correct SCCP converts all images into jpg's if not already.

If you were to code something into the product description would it be better to use flash for greater clarity? I could just create a something in CCFS and insert into the area using the html button in SCCP right?

Is there any downsides to this? or a better idea?

just thinking aloud

You would code the html for the location of the gif. If you already have fire starter then you can go that route if you want to. FS would give you more control over the animation but it's flash so if you don't thinks that's a problem go for it.

Do keep in mind that if you opt for a Flash type setup you could be messing your customers up if they don't have flash available (some people don't install it, and many mobile devices will not read it either). If you're putting options that your customers need to choose from in some way, such as a color swatch of sorts, you would be better off to make either a standard image that includes multiple colors in one image (you can do more than one image of them if you have too many) or something that doesn't require Flash to run so that mobile device shoppers will not miss out on the options of your products. Just a thought

What you can do if you have a lot of different color or style choices is create multiple swatch images instead of just one. Since you have 4 extra images you can use, you can split the choices up between the 4 images and make 4 collage type images instead of just one. That tends to work very nicely.

Then just include the Optional Fields to give all the color or style choices you provide for them to choose the one(s) they want. The images just need to portray the choices, they don't need to be functional fo the customer to choose from.

Hope that makes sense and good luck with it

P.S. I like the idea of an animated image in the details area though, but I would still do the collage images and make sure the animated image is viewable on all platforms

Couldn't you just upload the animated gif/png into the shop[ping cart like any other product image, and then add drop down for color selection to add to cart?

Nope, apparently not Tom.

I thought I read somewhere that SCC converts all images to jpg when inserted and sure enough when I tried to insert a gif it let me but when I went to preview and looked at the img properties it was now a jpg!

so if you did any animated gif/png it would have to be coded into the product description rather than just adding it into the image section.