How to show thumbnails of simple products in configurable products with Magento

Question

I want to show each simple product's thumbnail image and option name with a radio button to select in configurable products. Default behavior is showing options in text with a widget like dropdown box. I am using Magento Community Edition 1.4.1. Are there anybody has done this before? Could you guide me for a right direction?

Answer 1

The default behavior is to have these in dropdown format with the images changing to that of the simple product's image using Javascript. If you want to change that functionality, you are going to need to change the helper that creates those options.

I don't have a clean install on mine, and I've got a module completely overwriting the options portion, but what you will need to do is find where the configurable product information is displaying those drop down fields and change them to radio with the simple product image. I'm sorry I don't have specifics for you, but that should get you started.