The Metro Ecommerce Project
The challenge was to make a website that has all the functionality that a small or medium sized company could possibly need and to combine that functionality with ease of use especially with touch screen navigation. Nopcommerce was chosen as the software for the task. This open source ecommerce solution is constantly improving and met the required content management aspects so that the end-user has more than just an online shop. Features such as News, Blogs, Forums all made the design challenge a varied one, covering most aspects of web design.
Navigate
The next step was to re-invent the menu system with touch screen navigation being the number one priority. The answer became obvious - Windows 8 user interface. What followed was integrating menus in the form of sidebars that reside outside the visible screen until triggered by a button press. Now the functions that you expect to see are animated in from the side, revealing your navigation options.
Styling
Part two was to convert the entire nopcommerce stylesheet to one which was fluid and responsive to tablets and mobiles, and to make it presentable in both landscape and portrait orientations. Modifications to the View files was also necessary where adjustments had to made, and there is an advanced version that required some changes to the application source code, these modifications are now in the downloadable theme; the subcategory navigation allowing quick, direct category navigation.