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After research I have come to the conclusion that, despite the power of magento, there are a few problems with the cms. One of these is the ability to display a thumbnail instead of the options dropdown for configurable products on the view page and update the main image within the media.phtml on click. I see many extensions out there for swatches but there should be an easy way to display the thumbnails of each simple product within the configurable. I have tried the magento wiki walkthroughs but all seem to be out of date. Any feedback or direction would be great! thanks guys! If there is anymore information you need, let me know and I will provide it.

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Matthew Ciampa
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I don't think there is any easy way short of using an existing extension. And, I for one, find it much less expensive to use a good extension than go about modifying code that I'll need to maintain later.

I'm happy with the Amasty Image Based Dynamic Configurable Products extension that I believe will do what you want. There may be many options. This is just the one I go to first.

pcproffitt
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    I agree with you - I like Amasty but I recently used Chad Morgan's Ultimate Auto Swatches extension for this task http://cjmcreativedesigns.com/magento-extensions/pre-select-colors-plus-swatches.html. I'm all for coding things up myself (or trying to!) but sometimes it's just plain uneconomical. This is one of those times IMO. All very well saying 'there SHOULD be an easy way'....there isn't. – McNab Aug 20 '12 at 20:56
  • one more concern, would I be able to hack the swatches so they become product thumbnails? – Matthew Ciampa Aug 21 '12 at 18:24
  • If you know Magento I suppose you can hack anything. The Amasty extension saves the images with the corresponding product attribute. Product thumbnails are handled totally separately. Attributes are set up manually (at least I have not seen or used an importer for attributes). However, products and their corresponding images are easily imported. Not sure that helps, but thought I'd offer anyway. – pcproffitt Aug 21 '12 at 22:22
  • thank you very much, any information is great. I'm going to purchase the Amasty extension today and see how that works out – Matthew Ciampa Aug 23 '12 at 13:08