Magento 1.9 – Can Configurable Swatches Be Disabled If Not Used?

1. Yes it does. First of all, less modules means less code to (potentially) load and process. Next to that, a lot of modules, like for example the Mage_Rss module run a lot of code in the background like forcing reindexes on certain events.

   On the method best to use: disabling a module using System > Configuration > Advanced only suppresses the output of a module while still including the code of that Module in the shop. This is handy when you don't want a modules functionality but you need it's Models or Blocks for example because other (3th party) extensions depend on it. Disabling it using app/etc/modules/*.xml will completely remove it from the installation so performance wise this is the best option.

2. I usually disable the following extension via XMl

   • Mage_Rss
   • Mage_PayPalUk
   • Mage_Tag (when not used in a project)
   • Mage_Poll (cause who uses polls anyway)
   • Phoenix_Moneybookers
   • Mage_Sendfriend
   • Mage_Rating (when not used in a project)
   • Mage_Bundle (again, if not required by client)
   • Mage_Downloadable (see above)

   and via System > Congiguration > Advanced the Mage_Adminnotification which suppresses those annoying popups in the backend.

   You can probably disable several more core extensions depending on what you're using or not. Just make sure that you don't compromise the stability of Magento. I guess this will take some trial and error.

We ran into this and perhaps someone has a better solution, but we extended the configurable swatches productimage.php helper with our own module. Perhaps Magento intended everyone to create manual swatches for every product. That tis time consuming and we have products that does not work well for. They uses the Varien Image model which allowed them access to caching, but does not have the convenient default settings of the MAGE catalog/image model. The nice part is those functions are available.

If you don't know how to create a module would suggest making square images. "Do Not Edit The Core Files" Extend Them!

We extended the

protected function _resizeSwatchImage($filename, $tag, $width, $height)
{

below

$processor = new Varien_Image($sourceFilePath);

we added

$processor->backgroundColor(array(255, 255, 255)); 
// Set background color to white
$processor->constrainOnly(TRUE); 
//Constrain to proportions
$processor->keepAspectRatio(TRUE); 
//keep existing aspect ratio
$processor->keepFrame(TRUE);
//Kinda what it says