I am just starting to get familiar with Drupal 7's Commerce modules. The first thing I noticed after enabling the standard Commerce modules was that doing so created a Shopping Cart Block that could be added to any Region. However, placing the default shopping cart block into a region caused the block to be shown at all times, even if it was empty. While some may define this always visibable (and often empty) shopping cart as a subconscious "call to action", I find it simply annoying.

I confess that in several day dreaming sessions, Acquia has puts me up for a few weeks to teach me how to code Drupal to accomplish my requirements. But in the real world, I have to look for non-coding ways to accomplish what I want by using modules and methods already provided by people who are a lot more knowledgeable about such things. In researching this issue/desire, I came across a threaded discussion in which Ryan Szrama, the author of Drupal Commerce, wrote "...you don't actually have to use the core cart block at all. You can still use the same View and just add a Block display to it. Disable the core block and voila! Hide when empty will probably work just fine." Several posters after which continued to discuss coding fixes to hide empty shopping carts.

Crickets sounds.....