Hi,
If you switch it off, you shouldn't be seeing the custom field, but the "add to cart" button will be visible. That's correct, nothing is wrong here. There is another parameter to hide the "Add to cart" button, which will hide "ALL" the add to cart buttons, regardless of looking if the product has custom field or not. You should disable that option if you want to hide the add to cart completely.
I agree with you. this has to improved. Indeed we have done this improvement already with our another template: CleanMart
Take a look at this page (this is the category page of CleanMart):
demo.flexiblewebdesign.com/cleanmart/index.php/vm-categories/category-default-layout
Product 01,Product 03A in the above link have custom fields, and if you hover the "Add to Cart" button, it says "Choose a product variant first" and if you click the button, it redirects you to product details page to let you choose the product variant.
If there is NO custom field at all (such as
Product 04) , and the "add to cart" button (in the category page) will work as usual and adds the product to cart directly (from category page)
This is the best way to handle things without giving any confusion to clients and avoid wrong purchases.
This improvement will also be applied to PureMart as well, (most likely in the upcoming version). I can't provide you the code modifications in here to achieve this, because this is not an easy task to handle.
We keep updating and improving our templates/extensions.
For instance, a new version for zoom effect is on the way, will be released in couple days.
For details see:
www.facebook.com/flexibleWD and take a look at the 1st post.
The new version of PureMart is also on the way and will fix/improve many things. (including this one you are saying, we were going to include this patch to new version of PureMart even though you didn't ask for it)
Stay tuned. "Like and Follow" our Facebook page to be updated.
Regards,
Support