Type, Vendor, and Tag lists for collections

[cshold]

Work in progress: adding type and vendor to the existing tag list on collections.liquid.

• The user flow can be a bit discouraging. If you've selected a type, then select a vendor, you go to only the products of that vendor. The type will have been forgotten.
• Renamed collection-tags.liquid to .collection-sidebar.liquid

[cshold]

@carolineschnapp What do you think about this addition? Adds lists based on type and vendor to the collections page sidebar.

I'm torn because the usability is a bit strange. If you navigate into a type, for example, then click on a vendor, you go to just the vendor page and completely ignore the fact you were in a type before.

[carolineschnapp]

It's indeed strange.

You cannot stay within a collection, or a product type, when looking at items from a vendor.

In the same way, you cannot stay within a collection, or vendor, when looking at items of a product.type.

It would seem that Shopify would give you a way to 'drill down' because of collection.all_vendors and collection.all_types but it really doesn't.

[cshold]

I think it's handy to have this code in there for reference, as long as the comments make it clear of its limitations and actual functionality. I'll make some slight modifications and merge it in.

[carolineschnapp]

I agree!

On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 9:44 AM, Carson Shold notifications@github.comwrote:

I think it's handy to have this code in there for reference, as long as
the comments make it clear of its limitations and actual functionality.
I'll make some slight modifications and merge it in.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//pull/69#issuecomment-43626944
.

[cshold]

Going to go with this explanation:

  Side navigation for the type (category), vendor (brand), and tags
  in the current collection.

  Note: Although you can list out product types, vendors, and tags, the filtering
  is somewhat limited. You can filter by multiple tags, but only a single type
  or vendor at a time.
    - List all of the shop's types with collections.all.all_types
    - List the current collection's types with collection.all_types
    - List all of the shop's vendors with collections.all.all_vendors
    - List the current collection's vendors with collection.all_vendors

  Use product tags to manage subcategories inside collections.
  See 'How do I create subcategories of products?' for more documentation.
    - http://docs.shopify.com/manual/configuration/store-customization/page-specific/collections/subcategories

[carolineschnapp]

You can filter by multiple tags, but only a single type or vendor at a time.

You cannot actually filter by type or vendor, not the way you filter with a product tag. If you select a vendor, or type, you'll jump out of the collection you are looking at, and go to a special collection page, an automatic one. When you filter with a tag, you do filter: you stay within the current collection and look at products in it that have a specific tag.

Also, you would not want to filter — if you could — using more than 1 type or 1 vendor — because a product can only have 1 type and 1 vendor. Filtering in Shopify when using tags uses an exclusive AND, not an inclusive OR.

Not sure how to properly relay that information ^ but it's important to mention.

Regarding this:

  {{ tag | link_to_add_tag: tag }}

Filtering with more than 1 tag may seem like a good idea, but 99% of customers don't like that. They end up quickly with a page with no products because of the exclusive AND business. Over the years, all themes have been modified to not use link_to_add_tag. This is FYI only. The choice is yours. You may want to add a comment about the alternate.

[cshold]

Makes sense to me. The 99% tag stat is likely because many customers have few products, so it would be the ones with a huge inventory that could get use out of that. I'll revert to your recommendation and make a note about the alternate use.

My note clearly isn't enough to get the message across, but don't want to get a whole paragraph in there. I'll try and revise it and see what I can come up with based on your notes. Thanks.