Distinctive Shopify theme

Shopify standard events for analytics apps, GSAP 3.15 upgrade with improved text-split animations, four new storefront languages, and a modernized SCSS build.

Added

• Important: The theme now publishes Shopify standard events at every commerce interaction — page, product, collection and cart views, variant selection, cart line/note/discount updates, cart errors, and filter, sort and search updates. Pixel and analytics apps can subscribe to these events directly instead of scraping the page. The events SDK loads asynchronously from Shopify's CDN and can never delay or break the storefront: if it fails to load, everything works exactly as before.
• Korean (ko), European Portuguese (pt-PT), Polish (pl), and Simplified Chinese (zh-CN) storefront translations, covering all theme text.

Changed

• Important: Upgraded the bundled GSAP animation library to 3.15.0 (from 3.12.5, SplitText from 3.11.5). SplitText is no longer under the Club GreenSock license restriction. Split headings now wrap exactly like the surrounding text (previously bold or linked phrases could jump to a different line when a section animated in) and get an aria-label for screen readers.
• Slideshow and background-video text entrances now use SplitText's native line masking instead of a double-split workaround, producing the same visual effect with less DOM manipulation.
• Migrated the SCSS build from node-sass to Dart Sass so the theme compiles on Node 22 and newer. Compiled CSS is functionally identical; output formatting differs slightly.

Other fixes and improvements

• The animations bundle is ~4% smaller due to the rewritten SplitText.

Accessibility improvements — keyboard focus trapping in drawers, reduced-motion support — smoother collection filtering, and smarter color swatch detection for non-English stores.

Added

• Important: Keyboard focus is now trapped inside open drawers, side panels, and popups. Tab and Shift+Tab cycle within the open panel, and closing it returns focus to the element that opened it.
• Important: The theme now respects the visitor's reduced-motion preference (prefers-reduced-motion). When set, animations are disabled automatically and all content renders immediately. Animations disabled by the merchant stay disabled.
• Collection filtering, sorting, and load-more/infinite-scroll pagination now animate with a smooth cross-fade in browsers that support the View Transitions API (Chrome, Edge). Other browsers keep the instant update. Disabled automatically when theme animations are off or the visitor prefers reduced motion.

Changed

• Color swatch option detection is centralized in a single is-color-option snippet used by the product page, sticky add-to-cart bar, product cards, and filters. The sticky add-to-cart bar now honors the "Variant option for swatches" theme setting, so non-English option names configured there render swatches correctly.
• Filter names matched via the "Variant option for swatches" setting now respect the "Show color swatches" filter toggle, consistent with names matched by the built-in language list.

Other fixes and improvements

• Entries in the "Variant option for swatches" setting containing spaces now match filter labels correctly.
• Fixed a JavaScript error on variant change for products without a pickup-availability block, which could stop the variant picker from updating.
• Popup modals no longer intercept clicks while closed, so underlying links and buttons stay interactive.

Mobile menu navigation, transparent header improvements, Image with text video playback fix, and reliable variant image-set matching for non-ASCII variant values.

Added

• Setting to allow mobile menu parent links to navigate to their URL instead of only toggling sub-menus. When enabled, only the arrow/chevron opens the sub-menu. Controlled via a toggle in the header section's Mobile menu settings (default: off).
• Setting to enable transparent header on collection pages. Controlled via a toggle in the header section's Transparent header settings (default: off).

Other fixes and improvements

• Important: Fixed Image with text section so background videos (Shopify-hosted, YouTube, Vimeo) reliably load and autoplay, including after theme-editor section reloads.
• Important: Fixed variant image-set matching for non-ASCII variant values (e.g. Turkish, Polish, German, Icelandic). The product gallery now correctly switches to the variant's image group instead of staying on the first image. Both the alt-text parsing and the JS option lookup now use Shopify's locale-aware handleize filter.

Lightbox thumbnails, combined listings, new locales, and performance improvements across the theme.

Added

• Important: Scrollable thumbnail strip and product title/variant name in the PhotoSwipe lightbox, with toggleable section settings (Show thumbnails in lightbox, Show product info in lightbox)
• Important: Combined Listings support with on-page variant switching
• Lightbox navigation now syncs the product page slideshow and loops infinitely
• Per-slide transparent header logo option for the slideshow section
• Countdown blur animation and timer label toggle
• Hide-arrow option for carousels
• Directional swipe animation for slideshow transitions
• Discount form and <cart-remove> custom element for cart drawer
• OverlayManager for centralized overlay/drawer management
• Hindi, Japanese, Arabic, and Brazilian Portuguese locales
• disconnectedCallback to all section custom elements for proper cleanup
• Documentation link in theme settings

Changed

• Converted Cart to a <theme-cart> custom element with lifecycle management and event delegation
• Migrated SelectWidth to <resize-select> custom element
• Moved FooterMenuToggle from app.js to footer.js
• Deferred background videos with <template> element for faster page loads
• Instant sticky header transition (no animation delay)
• Smooth facet tab transitions
• Optimized scrolling-boxes performance

Removed

• no-js class, swap script, <noscript> tags, and associated styles

Other fixes and improvements

• Fixed pickup availability to show accurate pickup locations
• Fixed product form dropdowns not working
• Fixed facets toggle for short grids
• Re-wired cart drawer toggles after section renders
• Fixed predictive search visibility
• Fixed slideshow swipe transition clip-path coordinates

Major performance release with 2048 variant support, Shopify account menu integration, and widespread JS optimizations across core sections.

New Features

• Added support for Shopify's 2048 variant limit with on-demand variant fetching
• Added Shopify account menu integration for desktop and mobile header

Performance Improvements

• Converted Cart to a custom element (<theme-cart>) with proper lifecycle management and event delegation
• Consolidated multiple scroll event listeners into a single handler in the header component
• Added requestAnimationFrame throttling to back-to-top scroll handling
• Cached DOM queries and pre-computed values across slideshow, header, full menu, and collection components
• Added fetchpriority="high" to first product card image on collection pages
• Optimized Liquid templates by reducing redundant settings lookups and slimming variant JSON output
• Migrated from deprecated img_url to modern image_url Liquid filter
• Removed unnecessary <noscript> fallback images

Bug Fixes

• Fixed slideshow swipe transition clip-path coordinates
• Fixed collection tabs separator visibility on first tab
• Fixed full menu subpanel iteration bug