Zen Cart, the open source shopping cart of choice is a fantastic tool for businesses who need a shopping cart online. A coworker of mine, Dave Whitlark, showed me today the Image Handler 2 module for Zen Cart. This is a fantastic tool that I recommend to all users of Zen Cart. Here are some of it’s features as mentioned by the modules page on zencart.org;

Improved site performance (faster loading, faster display)
* Professional looking images (no stair-effects, smooth edges)
* Uploading one image automatically creates small, medium and large images on page request.
* Choose preferred image-types for each image size.
* Source image filetype doesn’t matter. Have jpg base files with gif and png additional files if you want to.
* Drops in and out seamlessly. No need to redo your images. All images are kept.
* Easy install. One-click-database-upgrade.
* Works with mass-update/-upload tools like EzPopulate.
* Watermark images to prevent Mr. Competitor from stealing them.
* Fancy image hover functionality lets a larger image pop up whenever you move your mouse above a small image (switchable).
* Watermarking and Fancy Hovers work with different source-images for small, medium and large, too!
* Choose an image background color matching to match you site’s color or select a transparent background for your images.
* Manage your multiple images for products easily from one page just like you do with attributes in the Products Attribute Manager.

This is a terrific plugin for Zen Cart and again, I recommend it to all Zen Cart users. It helps enhance the Zen Cart core and prove why Zen Cart is just as good and effective of a shopping cart as anything else out there. Check it out.

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