Re changes to auction description width

[3drom]

I don't understand this HTML and CSS stuff. What I do understand though is my listings now look a mess.

I spent time over the weekend perfecting (or so I thought a new template to include the new sales venues and listing width. I used the standard eBid template in the defaults with a table and advanced wysiwyg. Tried to post earlier and this is what I got: http://uk.three.ebid.net/perl/auctio...3-1&mo=auction

As you can see it looks messy. I have as much information in the description as I can put there but there is lots of excess space.

Hi Lofty, I had a brief look at your auction, I think this is the cause of all the vertical space:

<td>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td>

Those table rows each add a vertical space.
If you can wait a few more days I will have designed a really simple auction template which uses CSS, it will be easy to edit, and I can customise it if you need to add anything extra to it. You'll find the layout is a lot easier to control with CSS, i.e. you can list a hundred items, and then if you think "I wish I'd put a bigger space between the title and the description", rather than having to edit 100 auctions, you only need to change one value in the CSS file, which styles all of the auctions.
Give me a few days and I'll get something together and start a new thread here with it.
It would be nice to have five to ten simple templates which people can copy off the site, and then use for their auctions, I'll see what I can do.

[Gothicina]

Hi Gothinica, thanks for having a look at my CSS.
I solved the problem with the <a> selectors taking over the entire page by making them into more specific descendent selectors, as follows:
I changed
A:link {
COLOR: #FFFFFF;
TEXT-DECORATION: none;
}

to

#wrapper A:link {
COLOR: #FFFFFF;
TEXT-DECORATION: none;
}

So it only affect anchors that inside the div with the id of 'wrapper', i.e. it doesn't affect the rest of the Ebid page now.

But you're quite right - as I just discovered when setting up my Ebid auctions, the two sets of CSS (the one from Ebid, and the one from my auction) do clash, but it's fairly easy to fix the problem, just put all of your auction inside an ID called 'wrapper' (or whatever you fancy) and then if you find that a selector is causing a clash with Ebid's CSS, then you just need to do what I did above, to make it more specific, then it won't override the original Ebid CSS.

Re using inline styles when producing templates for customers, I still think external style sheets are the way to go. Couldn't you use comments to make it obvious which parts of the HTML the client should edit, like:

<!-- TITLE START -->
<h1>

Nintendo Wii

</h1>
<!-- TITLE END -->

etc. ? They'd be pretty safe as long as they only edited normal text with a space around it.
If I get time (after uploading 180 odd items today and tomorrow) I'll try to produce a simple template and put it on the message board, so anybody can use it. Then, because it will use an external style sheet, I'll make some background images for the headings, etc. so that people can choose the ones they like the most, without having to edit the auctions again.
I'll explain in more detail when I upload it all.

I think you still misunderstand, look at the second part of my answer again, as soon as the user changes to the WYSIWYG editor ALL your external style sheet links are stripped out, as are the head,body,doctype tags.

In fact I do use comments, but my customers don't see them because they don't use the plain HTML editor.

So unless the user can use the plain HTML editor, & if they could they would probably make their own templates, linked stylesheets are a waste of time.

Yes currently external style sheets work, but ONLY if eBid don't change the way the plain html editor works.

[johnwash1]

I don't understand this HTML and CSS stuff. What I do understand though is my listings now look a mess.

I spent time over the weekend perfecting (or so I thought a new template to include the new sales venues and listing width. I used the standard eBid template in the defaults with a table and advanced wysiwyg. Tried to post earlier and this is what I got: http://uk.three.ebid.net/perl/auctio...3-1&mo=auction

As you can see it looks messy. I have as much information in the description as I can put there but there is lots of excess space.

Doesn't look messy to me, except there's too many jazzy colours. No doubt that would be the same with the old format.

The flags could have been centred. There's an 'align center' button in the wysiwyg editor. If you want something centred it's best to tell the editor you want it centred, not rely on how it happens to look on your particular screen.

That all said, of course it would be nice if these things didn't matter when editing. It's much the same as when people use doc preparation programs and don't learn to use 'styles' rather than laying everything out with bold/italic/fontsizes/etc to override each para individually. No doubt people laugh at me when I ride a bicycle because I never learnt to do it 'properly'.

[johnwash1]

Originally Posted by johnwash1
That's mighty bad news, isn't it. Perhaps you could be making a suggestion about this as a new thread in this forum. It's very relevant for the width issue being discussed here, yet it's also a wider issue (ouch, no pun intended?) that needs addressing.

But a worrying thought crosses my mind -- the WYSIWYG editor may be a 3rd party component that isn't under Gazza and Mark's control.

Do please consider starting a new thread on this Gothicina. I wonder whether that editor is even the reason Merlin got a spurious /* in his auctions that caused him so much grief.

I think the stripping out of doctype,html.head,link ect by the WYSIWYG are programmed in to protect the site, as I said it happens on feebay as well (& other places).

Protect the site? An individual auction listing could be made a mess with CSS, agreed. But what could an external CSS file do that an inline one couldn't?

[Gothicina]

Protect the site? An individual auction listing could be made a mess with CSS, agreed. But what could an external CSS file do that an inline one couldn't?

Inline stylesheets only act on the section of the listing they are applied to, & athough they are classed as "Bad CSS" their use in things like auction descriptions is what they are designed for.

I cannot remember where I found the original information on linked, or header CSS & Auction pages, it was a very long time ago,
but this MAY help explain why you shouldn't use them, & the problems they may cause both now & in the future & why (feebay info again I'm afraid)
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.js...=1205432675665

[lofty100e]

3drom: Thanks for the offer very kind of you.

Johnwash: Yes I tried the centre button but it didn't seem to work on all the lines; so did my best to line them up myself. The major problem seems to be that both the formatting & preview pages are different sizes to the actual listing. Therefore you don't know what you are going to get untill you push the button. That has been a long-running problem on eBid (atleast since I've been listing). But the mover to 900 pixels has just made the situation worse.

[3drom]

Lofty, I would recommend producing your auctions in an HTML editing program, then copy and paste the HTML into the Ebid auction creation page. That would mean that you can see how the auction is going to look when you're using the editing program, rather than having to deal with Ebid's narrow preview page. (I think they must have forgotten to change that bit when they changed all the auctions to 900px!)

Give me a few days and I'll create my templates, and it should be easy for me to modify them to your needs once you've had a look at them.

[3drom]

Gothinica, I meant that people using templates would use the plain text editor, not the WYSIWYG. Once I've designed some templates you'll see what I mean. There is another extremely useful trick I've set up in my auctions, which will also be in the templates, using CSS, which allows you to insert images anywhere you like in your auctions, AFTER they are running. So if you had 3,000 auctions, and you wanted to announce that you were going on holiday for three days, with a simple change to the CSS, (and the creation of an image with the text you wanted displayed), you could make all 3,000 auctions display that message, and remove it just as easily, using the
display: none;
declaration.

Or you might want to put a message about a special offer in, which you can do in the same way, as long as the HTML was set up for each auction in the beginning.

[leadhillsonline]

Gothinica, I meant that people using templates would use the plain text editor, not the WYSIWYG. Once I've designed some templates you'll see what I mean. There is another extremely useful trick I've set up in my auctions, which will also be in the templates, using CSS, which allows you to insert images anywhere you like in your auctions, AFTER they are running. So if you had 3,000 auctions, and you wanted to announce that you were going on holiday for three days, with a simple change to the CSS, (and the creation of an image with the text you wanted displayed), you could make all 3,000 auctions display that message, and remove it just as easily, using the
display: none;
declaration.

Or you might want to put a message about a special offer in, which you can do in the same way, as long as the HTML was set up for each auction in the beginning.

I don't know html or CSS and I don't want to have to use an html editor. I've always used the WYSIWYG editor. I'm lucky as my 2 youngest do know and make my templates for me. If they didn't I would have no templates at all.

[Gothicina]

I've experienced this several times over the past week, it's a real pain, another bug in Ebay.

I don't think it is a bug, but a programmed reaction.

This thread on feebay may help you, it explains about
site interference issues.
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?messageID=1012629295&forumID=99&x#1012 629295

There is also a test you can try for your listings
http://www.isdntek.com/demo/auctiontester.htm