Re changes to auction description width

[Gothicina]

This is incorrect use of CSS - you wouldn't use a class ("f_white") AND a width attribute, you'd put the width value into the CSS style "f_white", and then you only need to edit the CSS to change all 3,600 auctions at once.

So if you had:

.f_white {
color: #ffffff;
width: 99%;
}

that would make the width of that table cell 99%. Also, you should never use colours, etc. in the name of your selectors. If you want to change the "f_white" style to red, or blue, it will be very confusing when it's still called "f_white".

That's eBid's HTML not mine as I stated in my post, it was only put in as a possible way of helping Kedo, not to critisise their html css or anything else, I'm sure they have their reasons for doing it that way.

Yes I know I use inline CSS in my templates, I use linked CSS for my websites. Even if I had used linked CSS the artwork would still need changing.
I used to use linked CSS on feebay BUT

• It can easily break their T & C because it can affect more of the page than just the auction description. (Things like colored scrollbars, change of page text colour & the no right click script also come under this heading)

feebay does not permit the use of several types of HTML and JavaScript functions in your item listing,
HTML or JavaScript that automatically overwrites any area on the listing outside of the item description area

• Not all browsers can cope with more that 1 stylesheet, although they are called Cascading Style Sheets
• Their listing editor has a habit of stripping out CSS & sometimes CSS links, as does turbolister. They tend to leave inline CSS intact.

As for using linked CSS on eBid

• I don't know if it breaks their T & C I haven't asked,
• Even now not all browsers can cope with more than one style sheet
• The listing editor has a habit of stripping things out.

If the people I sell auction templates to could write them themselves, they wouldn't need to buy from me. The only time most of them ever use the plain HTML editor, is to add the template, all editing is done via the WYSIWYG. So they need something that will work with the WYSIWYG editor, not keep losing bits of the page.



As I've said I don't have a problem with the change, I would have preferred more notice so I could have updated everyone's templates,& in many cases artwork before it happened. The timing is bad because I'm going away, I should be packing now not answering this post.

If I hadn't have been going away I could have then helped people like Merlin & Red to sort their listings out, which is what they need.

[3drom]

[FONT=Trebuchet MS][COLOR=darkorchid]That's eBid's HTML not mine as I stated in my post, it was only put in as a possible way of helping Kedo, not to critisise their html css or anything else, I'm sure they have their reasons for doing it that way.

Now I see... Yes, I noticed loads of problems with Ebid's CSS, the company who did the site have made numerous mistakes, such as using colours, size descriptions, etc. in class names.

I have problems with my CSS auctions on Feepay, but that's because of mistakes they've made in coding their site, but everything I've tried on Ebid works fine using CSS (which is something I keep telling Feepay when they try to palm me off with some excuse to explain why their site won't display my auctions properly.)

If you use an external style sheet then it should be possible to change most if not all of the look of thousands of auctions without having to edit any of them, only the style sheet, which is ideal for sellers wanting to save time.

Re editing templates - if you use CSS correctly then it's as easy as can be to edit the HTML file, look at my previous example for Merlin, it's obvious which parts he should edit, and he doesn't need to worry about the WYSIWYG editor.

[Gothicina]

Hi Merlin, thanks for showing me the problem.
In your HTML code, you have this:

<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>

This puts lots of empty paragraphs in between the first line of your auction, and the rest of the auction. That's what's causing the white space, was it not there yesterday when the auctions were at the smaller width? I would expect it to have still been there, because the HTML would have made lots of empty paragraphs and the width shouldn't have affected it at all.

If you change your code to something like this, it should work fine:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>Merlin</title>
<style type="text/css">

h1 {
font: bold 1.2em Arial, sans-serif;
color: #000066;
margin: 0 0 10px 0;
}
p {
font: bold 0.9em Arial, sans-serif;
color: #660000;
margin: 0 0 4px 0;
}
</style>


</head>


<body>

<h1>
new sony ericsson w810i crystal case protect your mobile from bumps and scratches
</h1>
<p>please note payments for outside uk postal charges maybe more please await invoice before sending any payments IF IN ANY DOUBT MESSAGE ME BEFORE BIDDING
</p>
<p>
thank you
</p>

</body>
</html>



Just edit the bits at the bottom, like the title which is in between the <h1> </h1> tags, and the paragraphs, in between the <p> </p> tags, and it should fit fine.

Yes I know that but technically that is wrong too, because you are then putting two sets of declarations, html head & body tags in every auction page, the auction sites own, & yours, yours can very easily impact on theirs.

The auction description is precisely that, part of the auction site's page, NOT a whole page belonging to you. So it should not have doctype, html,head or body tags, they are already provided by the site.

It's a bit like renting a room, you may be allowed to decorate it, but that doesn't give you the right to structurally alter the house.

[stitchysyl]

I have never used the speadsheet bulk uploader,,,(is that whats it called?) but with the width changes can I export my listings, change the width to 900 in all the descriptions and then upload them again.

Will that work?

I am reading all sorts of techy stuff here about how to do it that is beyond me to understand.

So is the export/change/upload option the easiest for me and will it work?..or am I not seeing a problem?
__________________

[kedo]

I've looked at lots of your auctions now and they look fine to me. I don't think it will make much difference to potential customers at all.

I think the auction page look could be improved too, but remember that everybody's auction appears on the same type of page, so nobody is at a disadvantage, and as I wrote above, the main thing that people are looking for is price, not the perfect auction (though that in no way means that the auction pages can't be improved further, because as you say, they can.)

No, that's not true. We compete against other sites. I can tell you from experience that the difference between selling and not selling on eBid is very subtle. For instance, you will see from my sig that one of the lines that I sell is antique prints. I have around 950 listed so far. A little while back a dealer listed 6000 antique prints. He lasted four or five months and in that time managed two sales. During the same period, with less than a sixth of the number of items, I had a steady flow of sales. Why? I have to say I'm not entirely sure myself but I do have some good ideas. Anyway I'm getting into areas that I didn't mean to discuss for obvious reasons.

I've been working towards a fix for my delicate sales machinery, perhaps you can help me? I want to enclose my auction descriptions etc. inside a box 600 pixels wide (the old width I think). I want to colour the area ouside the box (at the sides) with the same colour as the site background. I would like to push my blocks of text (that have become strings) towards the centre of this box. I've been playing around with tables in order to do this, see

Old style - http://uk.nine.ebid.net/perl/auction...7-0&mo=auction

With some changes - http://uk.nine.ebid.net/perl/auction...9-0&mo=auction

The altered auction is not nice at the moment but you may be able to see what I want to achieve i.e. I want to make the info central on the page, visually appealing/stand out and be easy to absorb.

How can I get better looking tables, I want them to enclose the text but not really show. What are the codes for the site colours (backgrounds, tabs & that green that stands out so well on the 'watch this auction' button).

[kengillam]

I found that my listings appeared differently on various sites so I enclose the whole of my description in a centered table set at 100%, that way my layout will always appear in the middle of any width size auction site. The only thing that would require a scroll is if I use a particularly wide image which to be honest who uses images wider than 600 pixels in a listing anyway.

[3drom]

Yes I know that but technically that is wrong too, because you are then putting two sets of declarations, html head & body tags in every auction page, the auction sites own, & yours, yours can very easily impact on theirs.

But the auction sites expect their users to upload complete HTML pages for their auction descriptions, and they work around this. I've been doing it for eight years, as have hundreds of thousands of other people, and it works fine. Well, at least it works fine on Ebid, Ebay is another kettle of fish, but that's because of bugs in their general page design...

And I agree that you can sometimes impact on their page, it depends on how you code your CSS, but it's obvious when it happens, and not difficult to fix.

[3drom]

I've been working towards a fix for my delicate sales machinery, perhaps you can help me? I want to enclose my auction descriptions etc. inside a box 600 pixels wide (the old width I think). I want to colour the area ouside the box (at the sides) with the same colour as the site background. I would like to push my blocks of text (that have become strings) towards the centre of this box. I've been playing around with tables in order to do this, see

Old style - http://uk.nine.ebid.net/perl/auction...7-0&mo=auction

With some changes - http://uk.nine.ebid.net/perl/auction...9-0&mo=auction

The altered auction is not nice at the moment but you may be able to see what I want to achieve i.e. I want to make the info central on the page, visually appealing/stand out and be easy to absorb.

How can I get better looking tables, I want them to enclose the text but not really show. What are the codes for the site colours (backgrounds, tabs & that green that stands out so well on the 'watch this auction' button).

I would suggest creating a <div> that is 600px wide, using CSS, like this:

#wrapper {
width: 600px;
margin: 0 auto;
}



(The margin centres it horizontally.)
Open Notepad, copy that code into it, save it as 'auction.css', and then insert this code after your </title> tag in your auction description:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/auctions.css" type="text/css" media="all, screen">

Then you'll need to upload the CSS file to your webspace, and change the 'yourwebsite.com' bit above to show where this is.


Then put this at the start of your auction description, after the opening <body> tag;

<div id="wrapper">

Insert your auction description here

</div><!-- END OF WRAPPER DIV -->

</body>
</html>

Try that first and then if it's what you wanted, I can then show you how to add the colours.

[stitchysyl]

Just thought I'd mention...i did it.

I exported my listings, changed the old number to 900 pixles, closed the listings on the site and then uploaded the amended ones again...

It was far easier than I thought it would be and now all my listings are in the wider format and looking good. ( fingers crossed.)

Just been and deleted all the old closed listings and I am back up and running with no problems....

well just one..... I forgot about the YDC auctions...DUH!!!!.... and when they were uploaded they had the new start time on them...I know the rules but they were there before I so I will leave them.

Personally I liked the narrower format but then as someone has already said....you can't please everyone.

I am happy to go with the flow and it really is up to admin to decide how they want THEIR auction site to look. Most sites would just do it and you would have to live with it...at least here they listen and try to accomodate as many people as they can.

.

[johnwash1]

Yes I know that but technically that is wrong too, because you are then putting two sets of declarations, html head & body tags in every auction page, the auction sites own, & yours, yours can very easily impact on theirs.

But the auction sites expect their users to upload complete HTML pages for their auction descriptions, and they work around this.

Actually auction sites don't care one way or the other -- if html/head/body tags are in the auction listing they just strip them out. Including them therefore isn't wrong, and neither are they expected (in the sense of required).