Happy Halloween!

This newsletter is going out a bit late. By the time you read this, you will have probably run out of good candy. Don't worry, we have more treats for you...

Squirrelcart v4.0.0

This has been in the works for awhile, and like my Aunt Gretta it's absolutely enormous. Wtih all the new features we almost couldn't fit it into this newsletter, but with a few shoe horns and some Crisco just about anything is possible.

Social Sign-In

Customers have accounts all over the web. Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc...

With our new social sign-in feature your customers can login using accounts they already have.

They'll have one less username and password to remember, and will be able to login faster than ever. They might even order something.

Click Here for a Live Demo

Theme Improvements

We have some pretty fancy themes that are sold separately. The built-in Squirrelcart theme was getting a bit jealous.

We put it up on the lift and gave it a complete overhaul. We added support for a 1280px wide variant, 10 different layouts, complete control over colors, shadows, borders, corners (square, rounded), CSS3 linear gradients, CSS buttons without images, support for web fonts via @font-face declarations, and all sorts of other stuff.

There are now 15 variants to control various aspects of the design. Once you narrow in on something you like, you can tweak it further with loads of new settings. Change the button sizes, fonts, colors, corners, gradients, etc....

Want lime green buttons with bright yellow text? Hope not, but if so we got you covered.

We still have full support for the old style button images from version 3.

The Highland Ave and Main Street themes have been updated to work exactly as they did before in version 4. We will be offering additional options for those themes very soon.

Performance Improvements

In earlier versions, there were several separate stylesheet and JavaScript file references inside the head tag. With version 4 there is only a single stylesheet reference, and a single JavaScript reference. This helps to improve load times.

Login and Account Improvements

• In addition to the social sign-in features above, users can now login with their username, email address, or both.
• Password reset functionality has been completely redesigned. When a customer forgets their username or password, they can trigger a reset email that contains a link that will automatically log them in and force them to change their password. They no longer have to type a randomly generated password.
• Password hashes are now stored in Blowfish when possible.
• Improved "remember me" cookie security
• See when your users last logged in, or when they first created their account.

Address Correction

For customers that are not entirely sure where they live, we now have address correction.

When enabled via FedEx Web Services or USPS Web Tools, shipping addresses entered during checkout will be corrected. It also works in the control panel when creating shipments.

Control Panel Improvements

We have a completely rewritten menu system. It is almost entirely CSS driven, with just a tiny bit of JavaScript to help things along.

• You can now search from directly within the menu, for products, categories, orders, and users.
• Access the most recently edited products, categories, orders, and other records from directly in the menu.
• Improved appearance and usability of record forms.
• Updated rich text editor to use CKEditor
• New order views - Orders - with item detail and Orders - Coupons.
• Order stats views now include product total, handling total, and other fees total.
• Added creation and change date fields for products, categories, customers, groups, and other records.

Sales Agreement Improvements

You can now make an agreement informational only, meaning the customer does not have to check "I agree" but will still see the agreement.

Other Improvements (partial list)

• Add up to eight additional product images, which appear below your main image with automatically generated thumbnails. When clicked on, larger images open in Slimbox.
• Date and time product options, with calendar date picker.
• Options can now be assigned to the All Products automatic category.
• We now use the mysqli extension for database access, with backwards compatibility for the older mysql extension.
• Groups can be flagged as tax exempt.
• Ability to sell products in increments.
• Theme changes for version 4 were written in such a way as to make it easier to upgrade from version 3 when using a custom theme.
• Custom themes can now optionally include all the CSS from the master Squirrelcart theme, so you do not have to maintain a copy of style_main.css.php and other stylesheet files in your custom theme. To do this, you simply create a new theme with a stylesheet named style_custom.css.php to extend the built-in CSS from the master theme.
• Much more...

How to get this version

Squirrelcart v4.0.0 is now available for download on our Downloads page, to all customers with active download access.

You can check your download access status here.

Has your download access expired? You can renew it for an entire year for $85 USD by purchasing a Download Renewal.

Switch to Squirrelcart Pro

If you are a regular Squirrelcart user, you can change your license to Squirrelcart PRO for the difference in price. For a comparison of the two versions, see this page. If you'd like pricing or more information, just reply to this message.

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