Limit products for specific category in XML

Question

I'm trying to limit the output of products on specific categories, i.e. I'd only like to show the first 3 products (no matter how many there actually are).

All solutions I find are to set the pager-size, but I actually need to limit the products in such a way that the layered navigation only renders for those three products.

If I try the below code (in local.xml) to set the pager-size, it does work, but whenever I try to set a limit, it doesn't. Why?

<CATEGORY_229>
  <block type="catalog/product_list">
    <action method="setLimit"><value>3</value></action>
  </block>
</CATEGORY_229>

Note: This is on a 1.6 installation

Answer 1

Try this:

<layout>
    <CATEGORY_229>
        <reference name="product_list_toolbar">
            <action method="addPagerLimit"><mode>grid</mode><limit>3</limit></action>
            <action method="addPagerLimit"><mode>list</mode><limit>3</limit></action>
        </reference>
    </CATEGORY_229>
</layout>

Note: After clear all cache in admin side